You’re assuming straight line civilisation. That we’ll always be as we are or more advanced technologically speaking. But civilisation isn’t straight line and one day who knows. Physical records will still be accessible even when digital no longer are.
Wow, interesting take. Some counterpoints from history:
- After the wheel was invented, humanity has never stopped building vehicles with wheels.
- Since the printing press was created, humanity has never lost the ability to mass-copy and distribute information.
- Since airplanes were invented, humans have never been unable to achieve flight.
I'd say it's perfectly reasonable to believe that humans as a whole will never lose the ability to read digital information in the future. Heck, I'd say it's the most likely outcome.
Humans learn from each other. Information "likes to spread". All of known history supports the idea that technology generally advances in one direction.
> - Since the printing press was created, humanity has never lost the ability to mass-copy and distribute information.
> - Since airplanes were invented, humans have never been unable to achieve flight.
This is 600 years and, depending on what you count as an airplane, about 150 years of history. On the scale of millennia, they don't say much about what we will always have.
> - Since airplanes were invented, humans have never been unable to achieve flight.
"Humans" don't mean much in that context. How many countries could build a plane? France, US (albeit they start having reliability issues), China, Russia, India, Japan, and a few others. That list [1] gives only two East-Asian countries, one South Asian and one South American countries. Every other on the list is an European country or a derivative.
Actually most of us here with a small team and sufficient funding could probably build a plane suitable for human flight given the public domain knowledge that exists. . A non insignificant percent probably have built model planes already.
Achieving competitive warplanes could be difficult. So could making something with sufficient efficiency or reliability for regulated commercial use.
Many sufficiently motivated people have actually built their own planes since the knowledge of how to achieve heavier than air flight/aerofoils widely exists.
