Checksums....

Checksums....

Postby monojohnny » Fri Sep 05, 2014 12:20 pm

We also need to preserve the fidelity of information we save for the Post Apocalyptic Society (Including 'The Knowledge' itself) : that is put in place some mechanism to avoid making copying-mistakes when we start churning out new copies (with our newly created printing presses) : something like a checksum / hash function, which could be added to the end of documents (pages, chapters, books?)

We could use complex algorithms (SHA1 [check authenticity, no original-message recovery] /CRC [does provide error-recovery] to do this before the apocalypse - but this might present a problem for the post-apocalyptic society - as we can't be sure they will stil have access to modern digital computers to make use of : so perhaps something simpler......not sure what algorithm would be best suited for this.

Whatever algorithm is chosen, we need to ensure we provide the checksum for the algorithm itself and include this in the body of knowledge.....

Or perhaps the lowest tech form: we just write everthing out in a poetry-form (Iambic pentameter + rhyming scheme?) : at least that way some sorts of copying mistakes would automatically be avoided.
monojohnny
 
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