10x10
December 28, 2006 12:45 AM   Subscribe

10 x 10 = 100. tenbyten.org = 100 words, 100 pictures. 100 x 1000 = 10,000 words. 10,000 years.
posted by loquacious (21 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
The idea that storage media can become unreadable due to technical obsolescence (as opposed to physical degradation) is the idea that the human mind is completely weak.

If you can build a 8" floppy drive in 1975, then you can build a 8" floppy drive in 2075. The laws of physics don't change over time, they are the same today as they were in 1850.
posted by delmoi at 12:52 AM on December 28, 2006


Um, loquacious, email jessamyn or mathowie and have one of 'em fix your 1000 link to make it 100. Quick, before anybody but me has a chance to snark!
posted by cgc373 at 1:06 AM on December 28, 2006


The laws of physics don't change over time, they are the same today as they were in 1850.

Ah, but you go one year further back, to 1849, and the laws of physics were entirely different. Really.

And that tenbyten.org, I used to go there from time to time, but there's a surprising (or not, I suppose) lack of variety there. So many of the same stories are covered/linked to. It'd be better if they expanded their base of news organizations.

have one of 'em fix your 1000 link to make it 100. Quick, before anybody but me has a chance to snark!

I have a chance to snark, but I'm restraining myself.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 1:14 AM on December 28, 2006


If you can build a 8" floppy drive in 1975, then you can build a 8" floppy drive in 2075.

Sure, but unless people want 8" floppy drives in 2075, you'll have a hard time going to the local Fry's to pick one up. Most individuals couldn't build one in 1975, so they have to rely on their presence in the market if they want one.
posted by me & my monkey at 1:27 AM on December 28, 2006


If you can build a 8" floppy drive in 1975, then you can build a 8" floppy drive in 2075.

If the criteria are laws of physics, it is possible to build an 8" floppy drive at any time in the past, present or future.

But realistically speaking, technology has a shelf life determined from an engineer's experience working with it and the technology from which it is based, as well as a culture's ability to understand and make use of it.

It may be possible to write a program in COBOL that is solidly engineered in 2050, for example, although it has already become progressively harder to find people sufficiently trained and experienced to do so, given the senescence of the technology involved.

As another example, scientists are still working out exactly for what purpose the Antikythera mechanism was used, and may never learn precisely why.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:33 AM on December 28, 2006


tenbyten.org breaks the back button. Bad website! Bad!
posted by knave at 1:56 AM on December 28, 2006


As long as there's ebay and middle aged packrat-type personalities with basements, there will be 8" drives.
posted by Rhomboid at 2:49 AM on December 28, 2006


The longnow.org link (10,000 years) pointed to LongBets.org. Any bets on what MetaFilter is in 100 years?
posted by carsonb at 5:02 AM on December 28, 2006


it was fun until i went to now.html.
posted by localhuman at 5:38 AM on December 28, 2006


Interesting and (to me) surprising to see "word" as the most commonly used noun.
posted by escabeche at 6:20 AM on December 28, 2006


Um, loquacious, email jessamyn or mathowie and have one of 'em fix your 1000 link to make it 100. Quick, before anybody but me has a chance to snark!

Wait... what?
posted by katillathehun at 8:20 AM on December 28, 2006


Wait... what?

100 * 1000 = 100,000.
posted by Diskeater at 8:23 AM on December 28, 2006


100 * 1000 = 100,000.

Yeah, I know. T'was bein' sarcastic.
posted by katillathehun at 8:41 AM on December 28, 2006


That tenbyten site has the same picture of Saddam 10 times in today's entry.
posted by papakwanz at 8:52 AM on December 28, 2006


And the same frickin map of Iraq 12 times!

Lame.
posted by papakwanz at 8:53 AM on December 28, 2006


I think delmoi's point needs the caveat that the original technology have achieved some degree of popularity. There are data tapes from the lunar and voyager missions that cannot be read now because the documentation describing the coding formats is lost. 8" inch drives, by contrast, were made in large volumes and there exists a substantial amount of technical information about how they work.

And it may be that you don't need an 8"inch drive to read an eight inch disk. You can read a phonograph record using a laser or by scanning the surface of the record in 3d all at once, and digitally "playing" the peaks and valleys in the scanned image.

If you could detect magnetic field variations on the surface of a floppy disc at a resolution equal to or higher than the size of the smallest field variation (i.e. resolution greater than the size of one bit recorded on the disc), you could extract the data be reading the detected fields rather than the disc itself.

My point is that you don't necessarily have to build the same device that was used back then to read the medium.
posted by Pastabagel at 9:06 AM on December 28, 2006


I was hoping that this was related to the 20x20 somehow.
posted by hipnerd at 9:07 AM on December 28, 2006


Double. But worth repeating.
posted by ColdChef at 12:39 PM on December 28, 2006


"Oil" makes the top 100 words? It's used more than "its"?

Really?
posted by squarehead at 4:54 PM on December 29, 2006


"Oil" makes the top 100 words? It's used more than "its"?

squarehead, you idiot! There's an apostrophe in "it's".

This is joke. Joke. I don't really think your an idiot. (Get it? That's "your" without an apostrophe and an e. Is another joke! Okay. I stop now.)
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:54 PM on December 29, 2006


Since no one publically acknowledged that they got the joke, for the record: this was my 100th post. Thanks MetaFilter!
posted by loquacious at 12:11 AM on January 12, 2007


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