GitHub inc, a Microsoft subsidiary, recently archived some 21 terabytes of data in long-term storage in hopes that an advanced future society will one day use it for historical purposes. Maybe they’ll want to know what kind of clumsy computers 21st century humans used. Maybe they’ll just want to play Doom. Either way, the archive contains as much information about human computing as GitHub could squeeze into it, including all the open-source AI code a future retroist could ever want to toy with. According to Github: Assuming nothing goes wrong, future generations should be able to figure out a way to run our old data archives on their fancy brain computers (or whatever they use in the 3000s). But GitHub isn’t taking any chances. If things go bad for humans — and let’s face it we’re not exactly trending well right now – the archive contains a human-readable “tech tree” including a Rosetta stone and everything our poor post-apocalyptic progeny will need to rebuild society in our image. Per Github: For more information about the archive and what’s included in it, check out the program’s page here on GitHub. Inspired by (and including elements of) the Long Now’s Manual for Civilization, the archive will also include information and guidance for applying open source, with context for how we use it today, in case future readers need to rebuild technologies from scratch.
