[KiddieKorral]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '(')my wife can find her own way out and I prauy she doesn't - till death do us part BITCH! Ya you heard me!)

[EnviroEngr]

Could be Tourette. May not be changeable.

[jpfrazer]

Interesting answers folks!!
Lots I hadn't thought about.

The obvious thing for me would be knowledge - how to meet needs not greeds. And a laptop+electricity source would be a good way of storing hundreds of books. In terms of technology - its difficult as ideally we leave behind stuff we dont really need and as someone mentioned we dont want to keep the stuff that got us in this mess in the first place.
There's a good thread:Appliances: the necessary, the optional, and the execrable.
which recommends washing machines etc I suppose it depends on what level we might collapse to. Most things we could make - or figure out how to make so long as we still have tools or the ability to make tools.

In a post total collapse thing then the following professions might acquire almost shamanic respect : dentists, midwives, herbalists, blacksmiths. Extremely valued would be all the skills you see in a self -sufficiency book - like basket making, bodging, gardening, tanning, weaving etc etc.

Conflict resolution might be handy!

I was also wondering about such as: the justice system or democracy,
although these things could easily be recreated after a fashion (and perhaps made better).

How about clocks and navigation?

I have survival- and self-sufficiency skills so its easy to say this - but I dont think we need be afraid of nature. Survival sounds like hard work, and a riposte to the environmentalists is often 'What? You want us to return to the stone age?' To me there's a big difference between 'standard of living' and 'quality of life' - People living simply smile more - there's something important going on there!
It is often said that modern man is separated from nature leading to fear of nature, leading to abuse of nature, leading to separation... This is undeniably true - but there's hope. I worked in the jungles in Bolivia for a while - staying with an american woman and her three teenage daughters. She was quite a hardened hippy (a midwife who had delivered her third child on her own by the side of the road somewhere in the desert). Anyway her three kids were not hard - she had whisked them away from their father (from LA I think) and plonked them in the jungle. It was hell for them - they missed burgers, makeup, tv, boys etc... The youngest was 14 and separated by a few years from the other two - it was hardest for her as she was somehow always winding them up and they would stick together to fight her - often physically - and always it seemed to be her fault. As a result of this she sought her space in the jungle, whereas the other two never left the compound. I felt some affinity towards her and we made friends - she showed me her world - the jungle. I was amazed! In only a few months she had learnt so much - she had named hundreds of plants and animals and discovered many of their properties. For example there was a solitary ant she pointed out as the 'hurts-for-three-days-ant' - the locals call it a 'burro' because its bite is like being kicked by a horse! So all this is to say that alot of our survival skills may not be burried that deeply. To me this is about empathy and awareness. Alot of it is probably hardwired - like nest building and foraging. Afterall we've only been out of the jungle for a few thousand years - nothing compared to the millions of years we've spent evolving there. I wondered though if it gets harder to learn as you get older - her other sisters were afraid of the jungle and couldn't engage with it at all.

[spiritoflennon]

Modern Democracy has gotten us into this mess. I vote for leaving it in the house. Let it burn.

[spiritoflennon]

Also, don't know about anybody else's experience but I've had two laptops both of which went in for repairs on average once a year. IT departments generally reckon that laptops account for a higher proportion of their time than desktops or servers. I would suggest you get a decent desktop or server with redundant parts and rely on that.

[mindfarkk]

i agree, you never really know what you are capable of doing until necessity demands it.

[Eteonian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('spiritoflennon', 'A')lso, don't know about anybody else's experience but I've had two laptops both of which went in for repairs on average once a year. IT departments generally reckon that laptops account for a higher proportion of their time than desktops or servers. I would suggest you get a decent desktop or server with redundant parts and rely on that.

[TrueKaiser]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Eteonian', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('spiritoflennon', 'A')lso, don't know about anybody else's experience but I've had two laptops both of which went in for repairs on average once a year. IT departments generally reckon that laptops account for a higher proportion of their time than desktops or servers. I would suggest you get a decent desktop or server with redundant parts and rely on that.

[spiritoflennon]

Can you get harddrives that don't use cylinders and moving heads then?

[No-Oil]

Hmm, solid state parts are made as cheaply as possible, rather than as robustly as we are capable of. Thus they die more often than the makers would like.

If you are going to buy a system for storage, then buy an old low energy system that is a component part system, like a desktop but with no or minimal integrated peripherals, these can be picked up dirt cheap now. So if something breaksdown, then whip it out & insert a new one.

Then buy lots of spares, so that you will be repair independant & ensure it has a UPS supply to avoid issues with low quality power delivery in future.
Also use a raid disk system & keep backups, thus minmising the possability of data loss. A couple of large external self contained disks make a fast efficient backup medium.

But remember you probably won't be able to print much later, so the PC will become a limiting device for actual use. You know, you are in the middle of a field up to your arse in fixing/building something & you need to know something NOW. You can't just pull the book or a piece of paper out of your pocket & get that info immediately. You have to go back to the PC's location & this could take hours !

You can't beat paper as the worlds greatest portable storage medium.

Chris W.

[k_semler]

Yes, but they are mighty expensive as SSD, (Solid State Disk), technology is very new in the marketplace. The company that is manufacturing these units is BitMICRO and Fast Flash Disk, and IBM. Prices are very high, similar to what HDD's costed when they were first new, (about $1 per MB). a 1GB unit will cost you $1,179.99

[spiritoflennon]

I have three PC's and one laptop at present so I think I'll just hope my two hard drives don't fail on my main computer and have a couple or three spares of every component. Once these are gone I can start canibalising the others for parts. I reckon the PC's should last as long as my electricity solution and other technology lasts me. After that I'm sorry children but you'll have to make do.

Personally I want my PC for the following.
1) Educational software and reference material.
2) Music storage.

Paper is a good storage medium. Unfortunately don't bank on it long term.

[k_semler]

It is possible to recover information from paper so long as the physical medium exists, and has not decayed to be unrecognisable. Many books are in existance from over 100 years ago, and some have even survived in excess of 400, (the Geutenberg Bible). However, digital medium is severly limited in life span. For instance, can you read punchcards on your modern computer, or recover a program written on the Amiga that was stored on a tape? Do you have a tape drive in your computer, and can you read 5.25" floppies on your system? I would guess the awnser to most of these questions is no, unless you have purposly biult your machine to read all archaic forms of data storage. Even though I have a near top of the line system, I still have both a 3.5" and a 5.25" floppy drive in my system "just in case" I need to use that storage medium, or recover data off of some disks. Hell, I only recently made the conversion over to USB keychain drives to replace my floppy collection , (but I still use floppies for archiving 16 bit software that I find. I will not waste a USB drive on this, since Win 3.x and DOS cannot read it.)

I also highly doubt that CDRs, and DVD+/-Rs will still be the standard storage medium in 10 years, let alone 30 years. Technology is constantly changing and evolving which often renders perfectly good, (not corrupted) media completly useless, or impossible to purchase, (have you seen any retailer that still sells 5.25" floppy disks that are brand new?) Text on paper will always be possible to recover information from so long as the language survives, and literacy is not lost, while the progress of technology imposes forced obsolesence, often rendering perfectly usable media unusable due to lack of a method to access the media. I would place the reliablity on paper over digital media any day of the year for long term storage and future recovery.

[spiritoflennon]

Providing that is you use acid free paper which most people don't these days.

[TrueKaiser]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('k_semler', 'Y')es, but they are mighty expensive as SSD, (Solid State Disk), technology is very new in the marketplace. The company that is manufacturing these units is BitMICRO and Fast Flash Disk, and IBM. Prices are very high, similar to what HDD's costed when they were first new, (about $1 per MB). a 1GB unit will cost you $1,179.99

[TrueKaiser]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('k_semler', '
')I also highly doubt that CDRs, and DVD+/-Rs will still be the standard storage medium in 10 years, let alone 30 years. Technology is constantly changing and evolving which often renders perfectly good, (not corrupted) media completly useless, or impossible to purchase, (have you seen any retailer that still sells 5.25" floppy disks that are brand new?) Text on paper will always be possible to recover information from so long as the language survives, and literacy is not lost, while the progress of technology imposes forced obsolesence, often rendering perfectly usable media unusable due to lack of a method to access the media. I would place the reliablity on paper over digital media any day of the year for long term storage and future recovery.

[spiritoflennon]

You reckon CD's last 100 years? Do you have any proof of this? I have music albums that I are on their third incarnation ( i.e. I've had to buy it three times ).

[k_semler]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TrueKaiser', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('k_semler', 'Y')es, but they are mighty expensive as SSD, (Solid State Disk), technology is very new in the marketplace. The company that is manufacturing these units is BitMICRO and Fast Flash Disk, and IBM. Prices are very high, similar to what HDD's costed when they were first new, (about $1 per MB). a 1GB unit will cost you $1,179.99

[jpfrazer]

Interesting stuff on archiving paper here:

http://www.modelatrader.com/maffi/maffipaper.html

We can of course hold data in more permanent ways like etching or craving metal or stone - or even building things like calenders - e.g. Stonehenge. A very interesting project like this is The Clock of The Long Now. There is a book about it of the same name by Stewart Brandt - the same guy who wrote 'How Buildings Learn' (also excellent) and of course the 'Whole Earth Catalogue' (again essential reading).

http://www.longnow.org/

All this talk of holding data makes me think of the oral tradition. We have huge capacity for memory in our brains - but its not practiced much these days. People used to be able to remember entire epics - thousands of pages word-for-word. Its a reminder for me of the importance of teaching and sharing skills. And perhaps of the importance of stories (easier to remember than lists of facts).

[spiritoflennon]

Thanks JP.
Interesting link here also.
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byorg/ab ... 8-316.html