Erasing ourselves from history.

[Jedamethis]

Your mind has just been blown.

?

No it hasn't.
Yes we are digitizing everything, but they are copies, so in case the original gets destroyed, we can make another. Also if something happens to Earth, hopefully by then we will have humans living off-world, or passed on our information to another sentient species.

If every piece of digital software was destroyed, the likely hood that we would re-create all this software in exactly the same way is minimal.

Wait a tic.
*re-reads OP*

I see. How exactly would an electrical war obliterate every piece of digital software?

Humans are clever and want to be remembered enough that if there was any threat of some kind of disaster that could wipe us or our legacy out, we would
1. Flee and hope that enough people escape to rebuild.
2. Create a computer that stored our legacy and completely cut it off from remote access.
3. Shield the computer as best we can, so it cannot be destroyed.

 

[Cxizent]

Massive electrical war? Fake documents? Impossible to somethingorother? Sir, I hereby posit that your arguments have been forcibly removed from your own rectum.

MASSIVE MAD EDIT:

OT: Yeh, not really theres back ups of everything mate

Durp read my topic. So EVERY DIGITAL device is destroyed. Meaning all these backups are also destroyed. Everything we've put on the internet and on the computers aren't written on parchment and books like our ancestors. HURP

I get it now! Like how if there's a fire that burns one piece of parchment, every other single piece of parchment ever to exist burns up too.

... right?

 

[Tainted Sai]

When you think about it, is a bunch of 1s and 0s really that different to what's come before?

When folk first started digging up ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and the like, they couldn't read it straight off the bat either. And yet, we managed to figure it out. I have full confidence in the ability of future-humans to manage the same.

As for the fragility of the records, again, how different is that really? Disks get scratched, hard drives get melted... Paper burns and nature erodes carvings just the same.

 

[Rednog]

Besides the obvious trolling, the argument is a failure in itself.
You make the argument that all the technology will be destroyed, every single device in existence. What difference is this from finding artifacts of dead languages, or civilizations that had no written works at all. Things will survive, the fine details from every civilization are lost over time, the overall idea can be worked out one way or another.
And if there is something that causes digital technology to go poof then humanity would probably have had to undergo some massive disaster and in that case the last thing they would be worried about is history.

 

[Icecoldcynic]

Except for the millions of books that still exist and thousands of time capsules buried by every school in 2000? Apart from those you mean? Yeah in the future no-one is going to have any idea we existed....

 

[Dark Knifer]

Also welcome to the escapist.

I've been lurking for a while actually, and I've been banned for a week after 10 posts (wooo)
Let me ask you this.
If Hitler actually existed, would you have fought with or against him?

As in existed in this day and age, or never existed at all? I'm going to go with in this day and age because trying to argue hitler didn't existed at all is like trying to explain colours to a blind man.

Unless conscription was introduced I probally wouldn't fight at all, but I wouldn't fight for hitler because he was evil and hated just about everyone in the world and I can't stand pointless hate.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.158631

What is this trying to prove? Are you trolling or something because this is just stupid. Can you at least explain your reasons for not believing Hitler existed?

..I THINK he was making a Godwin's Law reference, just to be funny

Somehow I don't think it worked, even if I did get it.

 

[RyQ_TMC]

Books and tablets are readable for centuries, digital documents are as good as gone in the first massive electrical war that is looming in our near future.

My point of view has already been stated by someone else in this thread, but I'll ask you this: Where did you get the idea that there will be an "electrical war" (whatever's that supposed to mean) in the near future?

EDIT: OK, so you've said what "electrical war" is in your opinion, but WHY in the near future?

 

[Muzza-Maaate]

Books and tablets are readable for centuries, digital documents are as good as gone in the first massive electrical war that is looming in our near future.

My point of view has already been stated by someone else in this thread, but I'll ask you this: Where did you get the idea that there will be an "electrical war" (whatever's that supposed to mean) in the near future?

EDIT: OK, so you've said what "electrical war" is in your opinion, but WHY in the near future?

Obviously a hypothetical situation...?

 

[FallenJellyDoughnut]

Meh, don't care, living in the now.

Yeah, my grandchildren can suck a big fat one. Also I will make a letter and tell them to only ever open it when you are about to die, and on that letter it will say... "Sucked in!"

 

[SomethingUnrelated]

'Course we're digitising everything. The same argument pobably took place when we starting writing on paper using ink instead of bashing a slate with a chisel. It's for convenience's sake. What a groundless argument.

 

[El Poncho]

People still write books about today and things that have happend.

 

[RyQ_TMC]

Books and tablets are readable for centuries, digital documents are as good as gone in the first massive electrical war that is looming in our near future.

My point of view has already been stated by someone else in this thread, but I'll ask you this: Where did you get the idea that there will be an "electrical war" (whatever's that supposed to mean) in the near future?

EDIT: OK, so you've said what "electrical war" is in your opinion, but WHY in the near future?

Obviously a hypothetical situation...?

Ah... a hypothetical situation. Don't we all love those. I don't think such methods would be used - information is too valuable. In the past, whenever one country got hold of another's archives in a war, they wouldn't destroy them, but take them for themselves. Case in point: Soviets stealing all the Polish archives in WW2. Any information would only get destroyed through collateral damage, nobody would aim specifically at data.

And modern warfare is surgically precise, compared to what we had in the past. If we were to have an "electrical war", we would know better than to destroy valuable data. The only possible scenario would be some nutjob regime deciding to "restart history" (as some Communist regimes have done in the past), and I don't think the whole world would stand aside and watch as all the information is being destroyed.

 

[Jedamethis]

I see. How exactly would an electrical war obliterate every piece of digital software?.

I'll put it in terms for you that you can understand you retard.
You know that level on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 where you invade the submarine base, and Captain Price fire the nuke to blow up over Washington, causing an EMP that destroyed all electronics within range of the Explosion? The whole world gets hit by a few of them.
Some people.

Spoiler

I object to the retard, and I am one of the few people who have not played MW2, but thank you for explaining it.
I thought you were talking about a virtual war, as I have not heard of an electrical war and they sound like they might mean the same thing.
So. I believe human self preservation instincts are strong enough that we would not destroy ourselves totally, or at least people would flee, so

1. Flee and hope that enough people escape to rebuild.

is still valid.

Also, A country who wants to be remembered could quite easily build a huge Faraday cage around the computer, cover it over with a shell of hardened steel and it's safe. If they knew how to, they could cover it with a a combination of copper and graphite sheets put together with a special bonding substance, which is used to test X-rays and MRI machines and that kind of stuff. It works well against all kinds of waves. So there you go. One EMP safe computer holding the legacy of the human race, and almost indoubtably humans left alive to operate it/pass on information on how to operate it.

 

[Muzza-Maaate]

Hah, what about all the dead languages, some of which can be barely translatable - or not at all?

Because face it, if a language - any language - is not closely connected to a modern one (well, the majority are but some aren't) good fucking luck decoding it.

At least 1s and 0s is a simple idea.

And there are laws concerning EMPs. And even if someone does drop a few of them - I can guarantee you, they won't be dropping them on their own land... And to my knowledge, there is technology somewhat resistant to EMP.

Fair argument I suppose. And regarding your EMP statement.. HYPO-FUCKING-THETICAL!! FUCK! It destroys everything HYPOTHETICALLY.

 

[FluffyNeurosis]

Yeah digital media is less permanent than a stone tablet but umm?. books. It?s not like because we have hard drives now they stopped writing history books on what happened in the last decade. Hell I would be glad if everyone had to get their historical knowledge from a book instead of Wikipedia.

 

[Grampy_bone]

We are writing ourselves out of history. In a push to be the most amazing, the most informed, the most far reaching of societies in the history of the earth we have put ourselves on digital devices that are only readable by those that hold the exact technology to open fake documents made up of 1s and 0s.

Thousands of years from now a giant pock-mark on history will be void of information and summed up by ageless plastic scattered under massive natural disasters the earth could have moved on from if the entire world wasn't paved in a solid layer of concrete.

Books and tablets are readable for centuries, digital documents are as good as gone in the first massive electrical war that is looming in our near future.

We try to be important, and instead we're erasing ourselves from the very fabric of time itself.

We've even taken the mediums that taught us about past society (art, photos, etc.) and digitized them... we really are writing ourselves out of existence. Our legacy is proprietary information...

Your mind has just been blown.

Except that you are utterly wrong. For instance, did you know that ancient Sumerian, the oldest recorded language in all of history, is not only known to us, but we possess dictionaries for it? Yes, the oldest language carved into primitive tablets and easily biodegradable parchments, with 1/1000th the shelf life of even the most basic CD-ROM, still exist after thousands of years and we understand them just fine.

Your mind has just been blown.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

There's scarier things than that

And this is not just true, but inevitable.

 

[VinnyKings]

So what's there to discuss? If you don't want to use technology don't then. Shut your computer down right now and log off. Yes we are butt fucking ourselves out of existence but it was bound to happen. Books won't last very long and I doubt that you will last long either. No we will not explode in the next couple of years. Therefore we shouldn't need to worry about some crap we don't even know will happen.