lay investiture


Wednesday, January 30, 2002

Haven't checked on the Long Now Foundation in awhile. Looks like the Rosetta Project has gotten a little more sophisticated:

The container is split into two hemispheres with the three inch Rosetta Disk sitting in an indent on the flat meeting surface of the two hemispheres. The upper hemisphere is made of optical glass and doubles as a 6X viewer, giving visual access deeper into the tapered text rings. The bottom hemisphere is high-grade stainless steel.

The hints for reading the disc are kinda neat:

An external band of Genesis texts in 8 major world languages (English, Russian, Hindi, Spanish, Hebrew, Mandarin, Arabic, and Swahili) begins at eye-readable scale and slowly tapers down to nano-scale. This tapered ring of major regional languages is intended to maximize the number of people that will be able to read something immediately upon picking up the disk, as well as implying the directions for using the disk - "get a magnifier and there is more".

With the spherical container of optical glass they seem to be trying to make this thing into a bauble to ensure it will be preserved. It's an interesting thought that making something beautiful will encourage people to preserve it.

With the glass on top it reminds me a bit of the Alfred Jewel.

AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN


12:01:56 AM    


© Copyright 2002 Jason Boyles.
 
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