Human Continuity of Data Project
Yo, talk to me about this. Like, I just discovered that the maximum lifetime of data storage, hardware that humans have for digital data, right, that's machine-readable stuff, is basically 30 years. 30 years! And I mean, the majority of the world's data is on hard drives that you've got to replace after 5 years, right? But, worst comes to worst, we can throw it onto USB sticks or tape backups. We've got 30 years. We've got one fucking generation, right, of data lifetime, and then, that's it. All of the data that humanity's created ever, digital data, everything we've ever done, is gone in a generation. If we lose manufacturing capacity for manufacturing storage media tomorrow, one generation, it's all gone. All of our work, 6,000 years of civilization, it's all gone. I mean, isn't that fucking insane? Like, yeah, we get the stone tablets, the clay tablets, but everything, like the exponential growth, it's like more than 98 or 95% of our progress over our entire history occurred in the last 150 years, right? And all of the data that we've digitized, all of that is fucking vanished in one generation unless we keep manufacturing hard drives and tape backups and USB sticks and DVDs and all that kind of stuff. I mean, isn't that fucking crazy that we don't have durable, like actually durable storage media? Like, our fragile bodies are more durable than a fucking hard drive. Our fragile bodies are more durable than storage media that's supposed to be long-lasting. So I think this is an unacceptable risk for our species, and so I propose the Human Continuity of Data Project, which is basically like sort of a coordinating body to promote these kind of technologies, to encourage collaboration and adoption between companies working on this space to encourage adoption of this kind of stuff and to promote the importance of this issue. Like, this is a very important issue. If we want a hope of recovering, say, after a solar event where we get manufacturing capacity wiped out, right, we're going to lose huge amounts of data unless it's all backed up to that durable media. If it's backed up to durable media, all we've got to do to get back online is read that shit again once we've got everything else happening. So that is just reducing one of our problems, and I think that is a fantastic thing. And think of it. If our species is wiped out, but we leave behind this durable media, what a fantastic, like, treasure trove of historical stuff. It's like we can all live on in some, you know, infinite forever time future tomorrow discovered by some other beings at some point. I just think we have to leave a legacy like that. So talk to me.