EMPAC Director Johannes Goebel gave a talk, “The Computer as Time Machine," on the research that EMPAC has done into methods of archiving records of its activities. He started off by discussing tools. Tools are used to modify the current states of objects. This is in contrast to the desire to have other objects keep their states indefinitely, such as archived information. He also shared examples of how we relate to time and numbers, building up to how we can measure the passage of time in terms of human generations.
Computers are a combination of calculators and clocks, Goebel said. They operate at a speed that humans cannot perceive, so we build ways of interacting with them so that we can understand their outputs on our own time. Information stores such as books do not require any tools to be decoded or slowed down like computers do. This leads to one of the challenges of storing data over time: how do you ensure that it can be decoded, read, or interpreted in the future? Information stored on floppy discs, given as an example, would be challenging to decode right now because floppy disc drives are now relegated to landfills or museums.
EMPAC has produced a physical, paper book documenting its first several years of events, and it is in the process of finishing up a second book documenting the events since then. Goebel says that he’s not worried about the book surviving, because they’re distributed enough or someone will at least be able to pull one out of the hypothetical rubble of EMPAC. However, Goebel wants to ensure that EMPAC’s video archive of its events also lives on.
Goebel discussed some of the properties of existing storage media. CD, DVD, and Blu-ray formats are too sensitive to humidity and temperature, and they also oxidize over time, often making it difficult to extract data from them after a decade, two decades, or longer. Hard drives, since they rely on moving parts, are prone to failure after five to eight years, on average. Solid state drives need to be periodically powered up and have data written to them again to ensure that it remains true to form. (This is due to the SSD’s reliance on “capturing” electrons in memory cells to indicate a binary “on” or “off” state, and those electrons escape over time.)
Next, Goebel laid out some requirements for EMPAC’s digital time capsule: it must last at least 2–3 generations (or 100 years), be stored without air conditioning or other environmental controls, be under EMPAC’s own control (i.e., not rely on a third-party to outlast EMPAC), and can simply be discovered in a forgotten box. Goebel’s stated requirements for the EMPAC time capsule are, in my opinion, overly strict. My problem with these requirements is that they categorically rule out some forms of archival that I deem to be superior to Goebel’s proposed time capsule.
EMPAC’s proposed solution for a digital time capsule comprises several components: M-DISCs, a format similar to DVD or Blu-ray whose creators claim can last for 1,000 years; an Intel NUC, a small computer that is outfitted with hardware to read M-DISCs (and requires maintenance every eight years to ensure it can still boot); a keyboard; and a monitor. With this package, Goebel claims EMPAC could write its recordings to M-DISCs, bundle it all into a container, and put it in a drawer with the expectation that someone could happen across it in 100 years and be able to view the information just as we could today.
I believe that the proposed solution is misguided. As a photographer, I have amassed hundreds of thousands of photos totaling terabytes of data. I have spent more time than I should researching methods of data preservation to make sure that my photos will always be there tomorrow, and there are very good methods for backing up information and ensuring its integrity when your requirements are relaxed and you expect a slightly more hands-on solution. In my opinion, M-DISCs are not well-tested enough to entrust to this task. Additionally, if the NUC doesn’t boot in the future or its M-DISC reader doesn’t work, then I would wager that it would be easier to find another computer to plug a hard drive into than trying to find an M-DISC reader.
Though Goebel ruled them out, hard drives would be my choice for data archival. They should be kept powered up, with all of the data automatically being read and checked for integrity on a weekly or monthly basis. Filesystems like ZFS (which is my choice for my photography) are designed to facilitate this as part of their normal operation. Additionally, because this system requires some form of operator, failures could be detected and remedied in real time instead of being discovered many decades after they happen. New videos could also be ingested by the system as they are created by EMPAC, if it were provided with an internet connection.
Goebel raised many interesting points, but I believe that his proposed digital time machine came about because of requirements that are not well-suited to EMPAC’s goal of ensuring its work is preserved. The digital time capsule proposed has aesthetic qualities that mesh well with EMPAC’s arts-focused vision, but I worry that it is not functional, reliable, or robust enough to actually solve the problem of ensuring that EMPAC’s documented work persists.
I thought about this idea since you discussed it in class. I was trying to think of all these ways one could keep electronic information stored for so long. I finally came to some sort of conclusion when I looked at my phone. I was like "Oh wait, couldn't I just load a bunch of videos on this phone and drop it in the capsule with a solar charger so it can be charged and used anywhere?" Then I really thought about it and thought about the original IPods. I remember those things feeling and looking like bricks. they were practically indestructible. Empac could load videos or even music on one of the old iPod or video players like that and it would probably last a long time. Now the one issue I see with my reform is the fact that the battery might deteriorate by that point. But, my original iPod in my house has 30,000 songs on it and we still use it to listen to music in our house every once in a while. That iPod is 16 years old so maybe it might just work.
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