In this age of digital information, one of the most important questions that you’re probably not asking yourself is how are you backing up your information?
Today’s writable digital media is disturbingly short-lived. Hard drives crash all the time and recordable optical media deteriorate in the space of just a few years. As odd as it sounds, paper is still probably the best option for long-term storage, despite it’s inability to withstand flame and water. Paper’s got a few additional drawbacks, too, that become obvious when you need to build place large enough to hold it all and develop a filing system that’ll allow you to actually find something in all those reams.
The folks at The Long Now Foundation have recognized that the threat of the loss of data exists at not only the personal or corporate level. They have realized that the accumulated knowledge of our very species hangs in the balance! Action must be taken to preserve our stuff!
In 1998, they gathered to discuss this problem, and a solution was developed: The Rosetta Disk
What is the Rosetta Disk?
The disk is 3 inches in diameter, and mounted beneath a glass hemisphere. One side of the disk contains a graphic teaser. The design shows headlines in the eight major languages of the world today spiraling inward in ever-decreasing size till it becomes so small you have trouble reading it, yet the text goes on getting smaller. The sentences announce: “Languages of the World: This is an archive of over 1,500 human languages assembled in the year 02008 C.E. Magnify 1,000 times to find over 13,000 pages of language documentation.”
This graphic side of the disk is pure titanium. A black oxide coating has been added to the surface. The text is etched into that, revealing the whiter titanium. This bold sign board is needed because the pages of genesis which are etched on the mirror-like opposite side of the disk are nearly invisible.
This business side of the disk is pure nickel. Picking it up you would not be aware there were 13,500 pages of linguistic gold hiding on it. The nickel is deposited on an etched silicon disk. In effect the Rosetta disk is a nickel cast of a micro-etch silicon mold. When the disk is held at the right angle the grid array of the pages form a slight diffraction rainbow. You need a 750-power optical microscope to read the pages.
Interested in getting your own Rosetta Disk to store all your shit? Hope you’re loaded, because it’ll run you a cool $25k. But, hey, those pictures of you drunk at that one party and the first season of Aqua Teen Hunger Force you bit-torrented are priceless, right?
(The Rosetta Disk project is one of several pretty cool things that The Long Now Foundation is working on, and you can read more about it by following the link below. )
