I hope they're recording all of the data on stone tablets in cuneiform, instead of in some digital format for which reading hardware will be obsolete in a few years... ;-)
They have 15 petabytes of data, and they keep distributed backups. They also accept donations and volunteers, so if you have better suggestions I'm sure you can go yourself and help
> the Archive attempts to create copies of (parts of) the collection at more distant locations, currently including the Bibliotheca Alexandrina[10] in Egypt and a facility in Amsterdam.[11] The Archive is a member of the International Internet Preservation Consortium[12] and was officially designated as a library by the State of California in 2007.[13]
I remember reading about this a while back (probably on HN). They're storing a bunch of data along with the OSs and devices to read it in a bunker in Switzerland, so if we do leave a bunch of digital data, future generations can actually access it. Tried to find a decent article, but this was about the best I could do: https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2363904,00.asp
"They" in that case aren't the "Internet Archive" but the European research projects about the digital preservation.
The Internet Archive collects the donations now for the Canada site:
"this year, we have set a new goal: to create a copy of Internet Archive’s digital collections in another country. We are building the Internet Archive of Canada because lots of copies keeps stuff safe. We estimate this will cost $5 million. With your support, we are more than halfway there."
How long does a turned off device stay operational? (main circuitry itself, screen, battery, storage -- whatever the devices they're using have) Also, we were able to decipher cuneiform because there were a lot of clay tablets available to study, but will people in, say, 2k to 4k years from now be able to decipher how to work the devices, its OS and access the library of data? Even my iPhone requires a surprisingly large amount of knowledge to access my various bits of data, if it were 4,000 years in the future and nobody understands English anymore, I can imagine it would be difficult to decipher. Perhaps we should be leaving a load of stone carvings somehow explaining how to operate the devices (and to read english, or whatever language)
From the linked article:
> "If we can nail the next 100 years, we figure we will be able to nail the next 100 years as well," Farquhar said.
Except.. if there is a massive disaster event of sorts (WW3 was mentioned in the comments here), it may be longer than 100 years before somebody is in a position to access this archive. It may then be too late. Or the country is in crisis and the facility gets decommissioned or abandoned.
I'm not saying they're not doing a great thing -- they are! I'm just concerned that it relies on a bit of luck.
