Data laserdiscs and the Domesday project

I agree with much of this, but in the case of a catastrophic technology loss there is little to not use in having information archived digitally. Imagine if archeologists had to not only translate ancient languages, but also reverse engineer their technology and build a player to access the data inorder to translate it. In such a case even viewing photographic records would be a daunting if not impossible task.

Think if you dug up a silver cube in your back yard that contained an entire repository of the ancient world... but you had no idea what it was and all information pertaining to it was stored on similar digital media.

 

You've got a point, but hand over a reel of analogue video to someone without the means or knowledge of how to play it back, and see how far they get in watching it. Real-time media (i.e. audio or video) relies on technology for storage, and as a rule it's complex technology. In light of the Domesday project, though, yeah. The idea of making a lasting record of the times on a custom format, using a custom one-of-a-kind player, connected to a custom PC... it's daft on the face of it. I guess they assumed it would be transferred to newer formats as time went on, obviously that didn't happen as they'd have liked it to.

 

All of this Laser Disc talk as of late has gotten me quite interested in the format... Perhaps a future purchase is in order.

All I can say for analog media is that if one was to look at say, a reel to reel film they would at least get the idea that it was a series of moving pictures and looking at a film negative gives you a similar clue as to what you are looking at. Analog media is far from indestructable though, so the odds of anything lasting long enough to be discovered does not seem so good.