"r norman"  wrote in message
news:c9389l$e1d$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> On Wed, 26 May 2004 15:26:55 +0000 (UTC), Tim Tyler

> wrote:
>
>
> >Paper's a rather crummy long-term storage medium - not
least because
> >photocopying is pretty low fidelity.
> >
>
> Strange -- people are still reading books written 500
years ago.
> People are even trying to read scrolls written two
thousand years ago
> (were the Dead Sea Scrolls written on a paper-type
substrate?) In any
> event, paper does date back 2000 years and material in
excess of 1000
> years is certainly readable.
>
> The value of paper is that you don't have to copy it, you
just
> preserve it.
>
> Try that with digital!  Put any form of digital recording
you want
> into a sealed jar, hide it, and see what remains readable
in the year
> 3000!

I recalled that Greg Benford had once been hired to research
what procedure(s) might be used to (1) identify long-lived
radioactive waste sites after very deep-time preservation,
and, (2) also to
mark such sites with a clear warning in a suitably lasting
recording medium/reading-process. His final report covered
problems having to do with deep time declines in society,
eco-/geo-logical and other disasters/changes affecting same,
and the problems of obsolescence of media readers, etc. As I
recall, stone tablets were one of the only securely stable
mediums that would work. Deep-time is somewhat longer than
that so far discussed here, but it is an interesting
question.

The original short article I recalled was apparently later
turned into a book, which I hadn't known before googling the
subject; i.e., the book, _Deep Time: How Humanity
Communicates Across Millennia_ by Gregory Benford;
Publisher: Avon; (November 9, 1999)  ASIN: 0380975378

"...the book talks about a project the author was on. a
nuclear waste site in new Mexico needed to have a way to
communicate to humans (or others) in the future that the
site is radioactive. since the radiation could last 10,000
years, the message would have to be able to be understood
centuries from now." --from Bree Freeman's review at
Amazon.com
[see:
3Fv%3Dglance+deep+time+record+preservation&hl=en&lr=lang_en
Regards,         ...tonyC
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