In message , Ed Cryer
writes:
Diesel wrote:
Ed Cryer news Fri, 11 May 2018 19:49:28 GMT in alt.windows7.general, wrote:
[snip]

Have you ever seen "Logan's Run"? I was impressed by the spinning
storage discs, and it made me think about ancient papyrus, vellum,
paper. Medieval monks had a bad habit of reusing classical
manuscripts, after scraping them. Modern technology is finding all
kinds of things behind psalters and prayer-books. Boccaccio and
Petrarch wrote about well-worn paths between monastery libraries
and the scriptoria. Umberto Eco's "The Name of The Rose" revolves
around something similar. Euripides wrote 95 plays, and 18
survive; while many famous Greek and Roman writers survive by one
manuscript alone, often dug up in some place where there was an
earthquake or eruption.

Still, I guess that paper has greater longevity than laser-burnt
discs.

Paper, or Vellum?

It's probably too soon to say for laser-burnt media. We know plenty of
them that _haven't_ survived, but those are due to poor storage,
manufacturing faults, poor burning, and so on; there are lots that
_have_ survived so far.

Even if the laser-burnt disc had the same or better longevity than
various kinds of paper?, who's to say, a few thousand years (or even
a few hundred years from now) anyone would have the necessary
equipment in working condition that could actually do something
useful with the disc made centuries before?

Well, the paper (or marks in stone) we don't have the "equipment" -
knowledge - to "read" a lot of it. Before the discovery of the Rosetta
Stone (not just a pop group!), we weren't able to read (I think it was)
two languages, even though the media survived.

On the other hand, doesn't need to be a few hundred years: I doubt most
early disc packs are now readable; floppies, especially pre-PC; tape
backup; ZIP discs; minidiscs ... the BBC Domesday project (used
laserdiscs) ... early video recordings ...

Atleast with the present discoveries from long ago, it's text or
something else somebody today can read and understand. It doesn't

"Somebody" - maybe. Maybe one or two people in the world: maybe none.

require hardware and software from the age of that writing or
knowledge of such to do it.


Can you think of any technology of the past that's now
incomprehensible?

I've listed a few above. OK, you _might_ be able to find equipment for
some of them. But some of them are getting hard to find - especially the
Domesday project and early videotapes.

I know that people have claimed there is (like Erich von Däniken in his
"Chariots of the gods". Space alien technology!). But they've all been
debunked on further investigation. Things like the Egyptians knowing
about pi, having used batteries;

(I was wondering how having used batteries would help them know about
pi, then I realised what you meant!)

Archimedes having used lasers in the 3rd c. BC. How the ancient Brits
moved the megaliths of Stonehenge all that way; the Romans using
concrete under water (see here for the latter;
https://www.nature.com/news/seawater...-lasting-roman
-concrete-1.22231)

We know how to make waterwheels, Archimedean screws, Roman ballistas,
Greek fire, pulleys, etc.

But not to read a cassette recorded by a home computer of the 1980s (-:

Ed

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

By the very definition of "news," we hear very little about the dominant
threats to our lives, and the most about the rarest, including terror.
"LibertyMcG" alias Brian P. McGlinchey, 2013-7-23