NEWS: The Sunday Hangover with Warren Ellis

mentalrage said:

I'm sure you could have some fun with that if you went to one of the less reputable estates and found a nice lady of the night,( I use the term lady in it's loosest sense). In fact she'll probably be grateful for the company the money will just be a bonus.

Harleen said:

I was thinking something pretty similar to this. £10 can get you half hours fun in some areas of Leeds

malkav11 said:
The problem is, even though we're recording more data than ever before, we're doing it on far more transient media. Most varieties of digital data storage won't last more than a few decades, much less centuries or millenia like the stone tablets and parchment scrolls of yore. Even the stuff that lasts won't necessarily be intelligible for long. Formats change so often. I'd be hard pressed to read anything that was written to be read by a DOS program these days, much less for more primitive computers. And just try finding something that knows what to do with a 5.25" floppy...

Not to mention the thorough long-term unreliability of anything whatsoever staying available on the internet. Sites vanish and relocate and mutate into wholly dissimilar forms all the damn time.

And of course, all of that relies on having a communications and power infrastructure.

warrenellis said:

Define "fun" in Leeds. Beyond, you know, throwing yourself under a bus.

autodidactic said:
This is the sort of spark that made me originally want to become a librarian...

d20 said:

you became a librarian, i became a programmer. same reason, and i think if we survive long enough, same job.

obd said:

Are you guys familiar with the Long Now Foundation? They're interested in similar issues. The SALT podacasts are the only ones I still make time for on a semiregular basis.

We're doing a great job of creating and storing infromation, but I'm not sure that we're getting any better with analysis or practical application.

d20 said:

oh hell yes. i'm greatly looking forward to the day that a working 10000 year clock is unveiled (which will, if irony holds out, be shortly before a nuke lands on the city hosting it, but c'est la vie).

i'll have to check out that podcast... it'll likely prove to be almost as entertaining as the Savage Love podcast.