Thanks, n & v. What is The 5,000 Year Project?
The Core Knowledge site appears to be by the same entity, but I don’t see the specific titles I had mentioned.
So I checked Amazon to see if they are still sold, and they are!
Here is the link:
As to your question:
The 5,000 Year Project
Overview:
In the event of a global catastrophe1, our species is going to need seeds of knowledge. These, like the Svaldbard Global Seed Vault are a method of restoring our world. They transfer our hard gained civilizational, cultural, and technical knowledge to our descendants whether a century from now or 5,000 or more years from now. Unlike all other methods; paper decays, plastic CDs and other data media are not human readable, and carved stone has limited word counts, these seeds of knowledge are protected from the elements and deliberate destruction by their very nature.
Problem:
All civilizations have a shelf life. Many people are concerned that our current western civilization is reaching its end. Like medieval scribes laboring over now faded and brittle parchments we want our descendants to know how we lived, learn from our successes and failures and have lives better than ours.
Opportunity:
To live and know your life mattered, that you made a difference, is a near universal human desire. Here is a simple and affordable way for the everyman to do something that will matter long after his bones have turned to dust. In 5,000 years a vivid picture of life in America would be like news from Atlantis! To be a part of this? Priceless!
Solution:
Seeds of Knowledge are a multilayered method of protecting robust data storage media artifacts designed for very long-term storage of books and other of our civilization’s founding documents. The information is human readable, in part with the unaided eye, and/or in part with simple optical equipment, a pocket microscope and a simple projector that uses sunlight and a dark room that fit gracefully into the archival packaging, with over 35,000 books' worth of text.
The outermost layer is naked eye readable text and line images laser vitrified into fired clay bricks, which are then used to build a variety of structures, from simple walls, to houses, to memorial structures and public buildings. In most cases the laser-marked surfaces are hidden from the casual observer by being on the mortared surfaces. This protects the message from deliberate targeted destruction, be it from a cultural revolution, religious fanaticism or other temporary societal whim. A few of the population of archives have obvious visible markings, and will be discovered early on, the remainder's discovery will be stretched out over centuries and millennia, as archeologists will work to reconstruct tumbled structures. Removing decayed mortar will reveal the laser text.
Within the low data density laser-marked structures are hidden voids or vaults that contain corrosion resistant archival cans. Inside each can is a small treasure trove of higher density data photolithographically defined on glass plates, along with microscopes, projectors and other devices. A single glass plate holds about a dozen books' worth of text in a format readable with nothing more than the provided optical microscope.
The encapsulated data can even contain treasure maps to the closest Microsoft Project Silica or Arch Mission Foundation's site and a primer on reading their deeply encoded data.
Competitive technologies:
Seeds of Knowledge has advantages over every competing technology:
By contrast, Seeds of Knowledge can reasonably be expected to survive millennia. The base materials have a proven lifetime of over 5,000 years in the case of fired clay bricks, perhaps 100,000 years in the case of quartz and protected chromium, and the data is instantly recognizable as text to any literate people. Further, the relatively low unit cost allows a vast quantity of discoverable redundant archives.
Business Model:
Seeds of Knowledge will derive the bulk of its cash flow from the manufacture and sales of cultural and technical data in a human readable format dedicated to kick starting a new renaissance/industrial revolution after a global civilizational collapse. This requires a very select and discerning customer base, one made up of people of a philanthropic inclination who are willing to invest in a future they will never see, to spare our descendants centuries of dark ages.
Such people aren’t as rare as one would expect. People of faith would want their Holy texts preserved, patriots would want the essence of their country, its founding documents, to survive, historians and archeologists would want to gift their distant counterparts with a deeper understanding of our day in the sun than we have of our ancient ancestors, dreamers might imagine a future as enthralled by us as we are by tales of Atlantis.
In addition to individual philanthropists, there are many private and public institutions that would be likely donors and/or customers. This list includes any organization contemplating new buildings, universities, federal, state, and local government agencies, libraries, churches and other places of worship, etc.
As a bonus sponsors have their names included on the bricks and/or plates.
Where else will your name be remembered 5,000 years from now?
Footnote:
1 There is considerable geological, physical and archeological evidence that there is a global catastrophe cycle of about 12,000 years, Ben Davidson of Suspicious0bservers.org makes a strong case that as we orbit the galactic center we cross dust lanes swept up in the galactic current sheet and this dust triggers periodic micronova events on our sun.