Knowledge Ark

Knowledge Ark

Postby Cyberkedi » Wed Dec 24, 2014 6:46 pm

A concept that I have been trying to spread is of the Knowledge Ark, a depository for preserving scientific, medical, engineering, etc. knowledge - as well as culture - in case of a civilization-ending calamity. It looks to me as though Lewis Dartnell already has that idea. I am hoping to get in touch with people so we can decide not only what materials to gather, but also the best way to preserve them. We may have to think in terms of both short-term (decades) and long-term (centuries or even millennia) preservation, though probably we will be focusing mostly on the former.

It would be a good idea to have multiple Knowledge Arks - this is one case in which you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. They should be in places that are geologically stable and relatively safe from floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and other disasters. Therefore, they probably should be underground. I'm sure that I am going over ground where Dr. Dartnell has already been; however, the more we discuss how to preserve our knowledge - and what we should select - the better our ideas for creating and stocking an Ark.
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Re: Knowledge Ark

Postby germanforestgump » Wed Dec 31, 2014 3:19 pm

Hello cyberkedi! Nice to meet you here!
As i see it, there are two complementary concepts of preserving knowledge, analog to the job of preserving seeds:
"in vivo" = on field; and "in vitro" = in seed/germ-banks.
Preserving knowledge "in vivo" would mean the spreading of knowledge between living brains by education.
This is normally the most effective way because of the self-reproduction of the subjects and the running innovation.

But when the education-systems are disrupted by crisis, the "in vitro"-concept will be most important for the survivors to start again from the already reached level.
So the "Knowledge Arks" has the function to preserve the knowledge over the crisis and transporte it over time and space to later survivors.

This job contains some difficulties because of goal conflicts:
To preserve knowledge over heavy crisis, the arks have to be hidden deep in secure formations.
But for to be found by the survivors, there must be easy acces to them and the information of their existence must be wide spread.

There are at least two complementary strategies to manage this goal conflict:
- to build very ambitioned (and expensive) knowledge-banks in the most secure formations of every country or language-area;
- and to spread knowledge fragments all over the world in masses so that it will be nearly impossible, that all of them will be destroyed and never found.
This fragments can include the information about where the big knowledge banks are to find.
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