[anyfoo]

I think what you consider the hardest part, putting it together so that someone who does not speak any human language today deciphers it, is actually one of the least of your problems. Unless you deliberately encrypt the information (which you wouldn’t), I have a feeling that even Wikipedia alone might be sufficient for a motivated civilization to figure it out. Linguists and archeologists in our time have to do with far, far less, and they have reasonable success. Add in a few things like dictionaries, textbook, novels, and I have little doubt that it’s a big obstacle.

Rather I think you vastly underestimate what a billion years can do. The earth itself, and all that was on it, was formed a “few” billion years ago.

Our rivers alone have carved entire valleys into mountain ranges in much, much less time. I doubt a titanium alloy and some unspecified sort of super epoxy stand a chance.

And constant custody with regular restoration cannot be guaranteed for billions of years either.

That’s a massive problem for one plate (and its many copies) alone, more so for millions of unique plates…

The Long Now Foundation is only shooting for 10000 years, as far as I know.

[prox]

Off world would help, no atmosphere on the moon for instance makes for less deterioration, and a cave system would shield it from radiation.

On earth clay tablets have done a great job : we have tablets 6000 years old, so we know that works. That’s 60% of 10k already. Titanium seems expensive and might be melted down in time of need, like bronze has been often in the past. Clay tablets survived partly because it’s a ‘worthless’ material.

[Kuinox]

You need to bury it on the moon. There is a reason the moon is full of holes.

[hanniabu]

> On earth clay tablets have done a great job

The ones that survived

[prox]

Yeah, but they didn’t even try preserving it! Lots were found in average storerooms and so on.

[hanniabu]

When there's a lot of things to start with, there's bound to be a lot of things to survive by chance even without preserving. A lot of the stuff that survived was accidentally preserved by nature.

[prox]

You could say that, but I would point out to its resilience and suitability as a medium for long term information containment. Literally thousands upon thousands have been found. Imagine if one were to try make it last longer :)

[dredmorbius]

With some irony, tablets subjected to the usual destroyer of documents, fire, survive even better as they're vitrified.

[wikfwikf]

It is 60% of 10k, and 0.0006% of a billion years.

[GTP]

But can you engrave them with the precision required for miniaturization?

[GTP]

As for normal backups, maybe it is better to have a chain of medium term solutions for storage rather than aiming for a single long term one.