memory of mankind short texts

2. DATA FRAGMENTS - two examples:
There are still texts existing which are 2000 years old.
But unfortunatelly we only know 0,1 % of the antique literature. 1500 years ago nearly the entire
antique knowledge disappeared.
Common achievements such as writing and reading vanished within 3 generations.
Christianisation and the Migration Period caused this intellectual devastation.
We dont know, if these 0,1 % were the most important texts.
The last antique library in Constantinopel was destroyed in a fire and more than 100 000 books with it.
A century later the first known medieval library contained about 100 books.
0 100 200 300 400 500 600-100
1

3. photo of monitor with unprocessed signal TV broadcast quality
Due to limited bandwidth the video signal from the Apollo 11 moonwalk had a low framerate and had to be converted to fit
into the public TV standard. In 1969 this conversion was accomplished by simply pointing a TV-camera to a monitor with an
imaginable degraded quality.
Photographs of the control center in Houston show monitors displaying much more details as we know today.
We still have plenty of copies of the TV broadcasting of the moonlanding, but the only tape with the original signal and
superior quality was erased in the 80s due to a major tape shortage for the NASA Landsat program.
A tape that cost billions to be produced was deleted by carelessness.
2

4. COMING DATA LOSS
Compared to the data loss in the past, the coming information loss will be massive
and beyond comparison.
Our global digital library has two major threats:
Data inflation and unpaid bills.

5. -10000 0-30000
20162016
2016
Currently every minute 600 hours of videos are uploaded in youtube.
The overall uploads of 2016 result in a total length of 35.000 years.
A printed portfolio of the daily uploaded instagram-photos would range from London to San Franciso.
Or in other words:
To get a one second glimpse at every single photo of that day will take you 2 and a half years.

6. CO2
CO2
Along with emails stored in perpetuity in data centers, the entire facebook, kitty-fotos galore and a
gigantic quantity of HD pornmovies, the volume of data is huge and it inflates with accelerated speed.
In 2016 the electricity used for the internet will be twice as much as Germany´s annual consumption.
The carbon emission caused by emails is half the amount caused by air traffic.

7. Still unthinkable - but not absurd to imagine - that in the future data-deletion becomes a green planet issue.
A profound data erasure, executed by algorithms.
The image our grand-grand children will have from us will be created by machines.

8. There is a lot of - exclusively online - publishing: Protocols of summits and conferences are
distributed solely online. Scientists and institutes save their research-data in cloud accounts.
What happens to a cloud account when its holder ceases to exist?
The cloud provider automatically deletes it after a couple of unpaid bills.
INVOICE INVOICE
unpaid

9. Protocols of scientific conferences are comparable to the letters scientists wrote to one another 100 years ago.
We still can read the correspondance between Einstein and Bohr.
Will there be a chance to read today´s scientists´ correspondance in 100 years?
Will blogs - the instant mirror of what moves us today - still be readable then?
What about all the cloud contents by individuals?
Do we believe that onedrive, dropbox, icloud, wordpress, will exist for one century?
Will anybody in 500 years gain an insight into our communication of tweets, shares and posts?
In a distance of 1500 years the data fragment of the 21st century will be far away from 0,1%...
It´s very likely that in the long term the only traces of our present activities will be: global warming, nuclear waste and red bull cans.
Facing the 99% of rubbish and irrelvant content - a random fragment will surely produce an extremely distorted reflection of our era.

11. HALLSTATT
We ought to leave something like an overall picture of our
time. A collection of information that can explain to our
descendants how and what we live for.
Memory of Mankind - MOM - is a physical, analogue and
durable archive of today´s stories and knowledge. Images on
ceramic tablets and texts on ceramic microfilm are stored
deep in the oldest saltmine in the UNESCO world heritage site
of Hallstatt in Austria.

12. MOM is designed to keep our intellectual - but also our trivial heritage for a million years.

13. MOM can be retrieved in 100 years when our grand-grand children realize, that they have no original information any
more from the 21st century - or in hundredthousands of years - serving as a time capsule for the distant future.
MOM`s data media are resistant against influences, which normally destroy any other kind of information carrier.
The plasticine structure of the salt rock seals the archive within a few decades so it is protected
against natural or human forces.

14. 200x200x1 mm 1mm
The data carriers are specially developed for this project and they are the world´s most durable and resistant data carriers
ever, without the use of precious materials. They are directly readable without technical equipemt except a good loupe.
Of course the data density is not comparable to digital data carriers, but even storing the whole national library would not
reach the limits of MOM.

15. Burying even an immense amount of durable data carriers would make no sense if the chance for accidental
discovery is microscopically small.
Therefore a solid ceramic token is scattered around the globe as a marker for the MOM archive. Everybody who
takes part in MOM gets one.
This 5cm token serves as a key to MOM.
It can only be comprehended by a society with at least the same technical understanding as we have since the late
80s. This acts as a barrier that MOM only will be retrieved by finders who definitely can derive benefit from it.
The embossed graphics on this very limited space enables the indication of one particular spot on the planet with an
accuracy of some 10 meters.

16. Since languages in the future will be substantially different from our present languages MOM will contain a deciphering tool.
The concept for it has been developed by linguistic institutes. This tool consists of a pictionary: Thousands of photos directly
labeld with the respective words, combined with the theoretical volumes such as thesaurus, dictionaries, phrases, grammar,
etc
It allows a precise understanding of our present languages. Some particular information, stored in MOM should indeed be
comprehended unambiguously.

17. What should an archive of this
dimension include? What is
essential enough to be stored for
eternity? Who decides on the
contents?
MOM is an open project,
everybody can take part in.
Individuals can design entire MOM
tablets or just upload text, which
they find worth to be preserved,
including a brief explanation why.
A scientific advisory board
conceives projects, which fills
MOM with content, for example
collecting and saving the most
widely read blogs, the 1000 most
important books or inviting
leading magazins and newspapers
worldwide to submit their daily
editorials.

18. MOM is already used as an award: Documenting exceptional performances is a way to describe our presence.

19. Various institutions which focus on long term archiving and they use and will use MOM for their purposes:
Svalbard Global Seed Vault, New Horizons Message, Mauthausen Memorial, the long now rosetta project,
and of course: Museums.

20. Our global human activities have such a long term impact on the planet, so at least we should keep
the information about these activities for a similar period: The information about places with toxic or
nuclear waste is one of the most essential parts of MOM.
There are already collaborations with the NEA in Paris and the nuclear industry in Sweden.

21. MOM is the keyhole through coming scientists, the future human
race or other species will watch - and judge our presence.

22. There is currently a growing public awareness for the need of something durable. Initiatives dealing with long term
thinking/archiving luckily find MOM.
MOM is initially funded by people who recognised the importance of leaving something durable. Smaller and larger
donations helped to create MOM, to build the vault in the mountain with the first hundreds of tablets, to develop the
ceramic microfilm and to make various contacts in order to establish MOM scientifically with an international advisory
board.
MOM is now at the take off ramp and big players are welcome on board to help to launch this time capsule with its
precious payload into the future .

23. To keep the memory on MOM alive, every 50 years all holders of a token are invited to gather and to determine if
the content of MOM is still known, and to decide if it needs extensions.
50 years is a period from grandparents to grandchildren, a ceremonial passing on of the token as a kind of „holy grail
of MOM”. By this MOM can be seen as a present to the future - a gift for our grandchildren.
We don´t create MOM out of pride or vanity.
But we think we have - just like any generation - some pretty good stories to tell.
If we don´t write them down, they very likely will get lost - faster as we dare to think.