In a piece from February in On The Media, Bob Garfield is interviewed about his piece on Slate.com about the National Archive ingestion policies. He makes the assertion that they are actually not able to injest digital documents such as MS Word, and Powerpoint files.
“… the National Archives’ technology branch is so antiquated that it cannot process some of the most common software programs. Specifically, the study states, the archives “is still unable to accept Microsoft Word documents and PowerPoint slides.”
I would like to think this is because those formats are proprietary and saving them actually has all kinds of sticky legal and versioning issues… But it does beg the question, if they are not ingesting Powerpoint and Word files, what are they ingesting?
I have just stumbled across the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI), which contains images and catalog information for cuneiform tablets dating from ca. 3350 B.C., or the age when writing began. As of February 8, 2008, the collection contained 225,000 cuneiform texts and 85,000 images. The CDLI brings together the collections of sixteen digital library collections.
The collection is gorgeously photographed and allows you to zoom in to a degree on each of the tablets. Not only is it a joy to peruse, but it is exhillarating to see so many ancient texts from over 5,000 years ago.
The image shown is from The Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley and is from the Early Dynastic period, or ca. 2600-2350 B.C.
Tickets are $15, purchase HERE
Long Now Members tickets are $10
Long Now is co-sponsoring this lecture with the David Brower Center in Berkeley, a new space committed to creating a just and ecologically sustainable society. Long Now Members will get an email with the discount code for the tickets.
Originators of a whole systems perspective in the eco-art movement, the collaborative team of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison (often referred to simply as “the Harrisons”) have worked for almost 40 years with biologists, ecologists, architects, urban planners and other artists to initiate collaborative dialogues to uncover ideas and solutions which support biodiversity and community development. This event will provide a rare look into their visionary work and process.
In a nod to Kevin Kelly’s Immortal Technologies hypothesis that no technology actually ever goes extinct, we have this tidbit. Slash Dot reports that a hacker named Phreakmonkey got his hands on a circa 1964 Livermore Data Systems “Model A” Acoustic Coupler Modem and managed to actually surf the web on it… albeit very slowly. Thanks to Ben Keating for sending the pointer.
Tikal, a major lowland Maya civic-ceremonial center in the heart of the Petén region of Central America, relied heavily on the adjacent lowland rainforest as a resource base for fuel and construction materials. In this study, we analyzed 135 wood samples from timbers used in the construction of all six of the city’s major temples as well as two major palaces to determine which tree species were being exploited and to better understand ancient Maya agroforestry practices during the Late Classic period. We found evidence for a change in preference from the large-growing, upland forest species, Manilkara zapota, to a seasonal wetland species Haematoxylon campechianum in A.D. 741 as well as a decrease in lintel beam widths over time. Though M. zapota later returned as the wood species of choice in A.D. 810, beam widths were found to be significantly smaller. These findings concur with models that hypothesize widespread deforestation during the Late Classic period and indicate a declining forest resource base by the 9th century A.D. Because of the many large timbers available for temple construction in the 8th century, some system of forest conservation is indicated for the ancient Maya prior to the Late Classic period.
Source:
Journal of Archaeological Science
Volume 36, Issue 7, July 2009, Pages 1342-1353
The Long News: stories that might still matter fifty, or a hundred, or ten thousand years from now.
At a recent conference on the future, one of the participants claimed that every one of the top ten human diseases would be cured within twenty-five or fifty years. While the time frame may be overly optimistic (after all, we’re still waiting for our flying cars to arrive), the pace of change in medicine is nothing short of remarkable — as shown in these recent news items.
Long Now Foundation Seminar host and board member Stewart Brand, as well as former Seminar speaker Clay Shirky will be presenting on June 3rd at the US State department in their first mini TED conference. It looks like those of you in the press might be able to get a pass, otherwise it will be posted on the TED site at some point in the future.
update: The talks were also mentioned on the White House Blog along with a mention of Long Now.
This is one of the first altered time lapse sequences I have seen. It’s a great medium. Nicely done by the Citizen watch company for the recent Basel World Watch Expo. Clipped from William Gibson’ Twitter feed (@GreatDismal).
What do Klingon, Elvish and Esperanto have in common? They are all explicitly constructed languages — some for fictional worlds, some for the real world. Some are created to entertain, others have such lofty goals as achieving world peace. Some have dictionaries, grammars and language academies. All have a fair number of real world speakers, and probably even a few native speakers. But none, so far, have been the subject of serious linguistic inquiry…until now.
We at The Rosetta Project have always thought invented languages are totally cool (after all, philologist J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in his letters that he created Middle Earth as a way to showcase his invented languages and what could be cooler than that?). The invented languages Esperanto and Interlingua are both represented the Rosetta Disk — we have Genesis translations for both (hint: look in the European region for languages of France).
I have just stumbled across the 
