Item — HN Reader

I remember reading about this in the Wall Street Journal about five years ago when it was still in the early planning stages. It's nice to see that the project has survived.

One problem, however, is the disks will be very expensive, ranging from $1,000 to $25,000 (see http://www.rosettaproject.org/about-us/donate/donate). This not only prevents interested people from purchasing them, but also interferes with the ultimate purpose of the disks -- spreading an archive of soon-to-be lost languages to the widest possible audience, which will ensure that the record survives across the millennia.

1 comments

Actually, I think it having a fairly high price is a good thing. If everyone has one it's worthless, granted it would make them exceptionally easy to discover if there was ever a catastrophic collapse of human civilization. However, what I get from it is that the project is to get museums and collectors (vis-a-vis people who'll protect it) to buy them and keep them, so that when human languages mutate then our ancestors will be able to look at it and use it to translate other documents.

That seems counter-intuitive. The collectors and museums will still buy it even if it were massed produced and everyone in the world had one in their pocket. It's just that cool (as far as museums are concerned).

If your goal is to have something that could be found after some catastrophe (or by future archaeologists), then obviously more are better. But I guess (as you point out) if your goal is to have something that will spend 500 years in the Smithsonian on display, rarity is a good thing.

Either way, I imagine the high price has more to do with the cost of making them than marketing. ;)