Books, knowledge, information storage. - The future.

**Barry** · 12-01-2010, 10:36 PM

I have to admit that my first point of reference for most questions I have these days revolves around a Google search. Most information and knowledge is now stored on a server somewhere in the world, which can be accessed by anyone at the click of a mouse.
But how secure and durable is this information?

In the event of a future war, the use of nuclear weapons or EMP weapons could destroy millions of devices reliant on semi conductors. The Internet would cease to exist and computers would be scrap.
Mains electricity would fail across the world.

What would happen to all our knowledge if a few key people were killed, the Internet dead, servers impossible to restart and put online.

At the moment, we still have lots of books in libraries, but as the eRevolution continues, books could become a thing of the past.
What I wonder is, if this happened would we revert to the dark ages?

**Midas** · 13-01-2010, 07:53 AM

Originally Posted by Barry

I have to admit that my first point of reference for most questions I have these days revolves around a Google search. Most information and knowledge is now stored on a server somewhere in the world, which can be accessed by anyone at the click of a mouse.
But how secure and durable is this information?

This is something I've thought about myself. Under normal circumstances I don't think there's a great deal to worry about as far as durability is concerned; the internet is multiply redundant, and significant efforts are being make to ensure that it's no longer dependent on any one country, either for data storage or for routing. Of far more concern is the issue of how secure, accurate and trustworthy that information is, especially following the Wikipedia/Climategate incident where 'official' records were deliberately falsified, and that's something where we do have to take a great deal on trust. Mind you, the same could be said for books, their accuracy is only as good as the research the author carried out.

In the event of a future war, the use of nuclear weapons or EMP weapons could destroy millions of devices reliant on semi conductors. The Internet would cease to exist and computers would be scrap.
Mains electricity would fail across the world.

What would happen to all our knowledge if a few key people were killed, the Internet dead, servers impossible to restart and put online.

At the moment, we still have lots of books in libraries, but as the eRevolution continues, books could become a thing of the past.
What I wonder is, if this happened would we revert to the dark ages?

This is a very valid point, and although I think it highly unlikely that such a war would be to the extent that even significant percentages of knowledge was lost, there is certainly a danger that on a local basis it could be, and that tens or hundreds of millions of technologically dependent people could be left without any of that technology. Not just information sources, but literally anything that was electronic - switch off the power supply to your home and after all the standby batteries were dead, see how you'd cope, to get an idea of what things could be like!

**Greg Lance-Watkins** · 20-01-2010, 08:04 PM

Hi,

civilisation as we know it is incredibly fragile - you need only note just how close many members of our society are to extreme racism as with the BNP who refuse to repudiate their history and association and grounding in the vile White Supremacist Movement of America which has lynched and killed 4-5,000 mostly young men JUST because they were black. A practice continued to this day which the BNP refuse to renounce association with.

The people of Jugoslavia raped and killed their neighbours daughters based only on their having different superstions - the Zionists imprison and abuse the indiginous peoples in Palestine using brutal force and a state sponsored terrorist force.

Now consider how long YOU will live if the electricity grid collapses!

Water supply is dependent on pumps as is the supply of gasoline - fridges cease to function. In 5 days we commence running out of essential foods - consider Haiti where death is a product of failure of supply of clean water!

It is not just knowledge which may vanish - so also may humanity yet we stand by and watch the economic illiteracy of Gordon Brown's Government, the war crimes and crimes against humanity of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair and his utterly corrupt cronies, the denial of justice orchestrated by the undeniably corrupt Lord Cullen over Dunblane and Lockerby and we talk of what if and Dark Ages!

To quote Edmund Burke 'For evil to flourish only takes the failure of honest men to act'.

However all of the above FACTS are marked doen by the dishonest and their dupes as so called conspiracy theory as with the lies regarding Anthropogenic Global Warming and man's responsibility for climate change a Ponzi scheme of a proportion so huge that even many intelligent people can not believe it is happening by smoke and mirrors before their eyes.

Dark Ages?

Regards,
Greg L-W.