Does Terra of IY 1106 really know anything about 1969AD?

[Icosahedron]

"The contents of Time Capsule I were recorded in a Book of Record of the Time Capsule of cupaloy deemed capable of resisting the effects of time for five thousand years, preserving an account of universal achievements, embedded in the grounds of the New York World's Fair 1939.

The time capsule will likely move vertically or horizontally for geological reasons, [13] so an alternate electromagnetic field method is provided for locating. It involves constructing a loop of wire 10 feet in diameter and putting an alternating current of between 1,000 and 5,000 hertz through it with a power of at least 200 watts. Then the detection of a "distortion field" with the use of a secondary loop of wire about a foot in diameter will indicate the exact location of the two metal alloy time capsules, assuming no other large metal objects are in the vicinity. [14]

Hans​

1) What's the value of Cupaloy bullion on the open market of the Clan of The Illiterate Barbarians in AD 2794?

2) "If only we had a time capsule to help us decipher the strange markings on this metal slab..."

​

 

[rancke]

1) What's the value of Cupaloy bullion on the open market of the Clan of The Illiterate Barbarians in AD 2794?

(I take it we're no longer talking about the OTU but about the general problems with time capsules.)

I have no idea, but my guess is nothing whatsoever. I strongly suspect it would be too hard to be worked by the primitive methods available to The Illiterate Barbarians in AD 2794.

2) "If only we had a time capsule to help us decipher the strange markings on this metal slab..."

"Ah, if only we had enough books left over written in that strange and currently completely unknown language known to the Oldtimers as English. Then we might be able to figure out how to read the plaque. And, as a bonus, we'd be able to read the Book of Record of the Time Capsule of cupaloy deemed capable of resisting the effects of time for five thousand years, preserving an account of universal achievements, embedded in the grounds of the New York World's Fair 1939 too."


Hans

 

[aramis]

Remember: older documents have survived to today than would be needed for the AD 5650's (which is the approximate "Now" of CT/MT/GT); the earliest written documents known date back some 4000 years BC; the oldest on papyrus more than 4000 years old (2000 BC). We've got some 1500 BC (3500 YO) chinese writings still extant in original versions, and lots of later reprints. We know the major news of the majority of Chinese and egyptian dynasties from written records, and not all on stone. 1965 will only be about 3700 years... Comparable to the oldest paper-like documents (papyrus isn't exactly paper, but shares the same qualities and survivability).

Further, we know a lot about materials destroyed in antiquity from those who wrote in refutation of them. We know quite a bit about the Christian Gnostics and the Prechristian Gnostics because the Byzantine theologians wrote extensive refutations. We knew what texts to expect, and there were few surprises when Nag Hamadi's cache was found.

Likewise, the burning of Alexandria's great library didn't destroy the sole copies of most of the contents. It made the centralized depository no longer extant, and the powers that be didn't rebuild the collection, but the majority of the knowledge likely was retained separately; put another way, we still know the majority of what was collected. Sure, bits and pieces are missing, but it's still possible those bits will show up in some odd cache somewhere.

With the introduction of unicode, most of the worlds languages can be encoded. And anything encoded in ASCII or ANSI Text can be reencoded into Unicode.

The information keeps being re-presented. If someone were to wipe the internet clean tomorrow, in a few weeks, probably 99% of the information would be restorable from people's off-line backups. Even Mein Kampf keeps popping up like a cockroach...

Likewise, pirate scans of game materials keep resurfacing. Every time a takedown occurs, a new seed is done by someone else on a different locus.