The symposium of the Human Document Project 2014 took place at the University of Twente on Thursday and Friday. This conference and related workshops focused on the question of what key aspects of contemporary culture are worth preserving for future generations. What information should be preserved for another million years and how to ensure long time storage of the selected data?
The Human Document Project allowed students (and students only) to contribute by submitting their own designs of a glass wafer that would store the relevant data.The winning design was announced at the end of the symposium, on Friday.
The award went to Thom Ritterfeld (left on photo), Master’s student of Computer Science, whose prize included a trip for two people to
Message for future generations
Why did he decide to participate in the contest? ‘I applied because I truly hope such a Human Document will be created in the future,’ says Ritterfeld. ‘On top of that, I have been working on an application, which would allow people to submit their own message for the future generations. I have been developing the app for two years and this project helps me to understand the boundaries and specifications of such an app.’
Human Document Project
Human Document Project revolves around the realization that many aspects of human culture disappear over time. We can expect that our culture will undergo a major change due to a slow decay or a catastrophe. Many things will be forgotten and lost. Human Document Projects aims to make sure that the most important aspects of our culture remain available for people, who might need to start over again.
But how do we choose what to preserve and how do we store the information? Human Document is a multidisciplinary project that deals with all involved aspects of such Document: its content, the system, the technology, the material of the data carrier, protection of the storage media, coding.
