Yes, my friends as we are going digital we are becoming more perishable, and once we perish our next civilization would never be able to know who we were.
How we know so precisely about Ashoka (The great king who ruled some 2500 years before); The Harappan Civilization (3500 years before); Mesopotamia Civilization (some more than 5000 years ago); it has been ages since they have passed yet we have journals written on their culture, tradition, trade routes and even their dieting habits. Ever wondered How?
In 18th century archeologists begin their expedition and to their surprise they found town and even cities submerged within mother Earth. They found large caves, sculptures, rocks, seals, coins singing the literature of different eras. Ancient people were so intelligent that they inscribed all they knew about themselves in form of pictures and paintings inside large caves, probably because they knew everything will come to an end but these caves would survive.
Coming back to present, what are we leaving behind, Hard Disks full of knowledge, laptops with immense information stored in it, large data centers with everything we have discovered till now stored at one place, resourceful DVD’s, plastic currency in the form of debit /credit cards, text books in pdf format, mobile phones with no wires; In short Digital Civilization.
Now suppose this Digital Civilization faces all kinds of natural calamities and its fate is decided. After next 3000 years the archeologists of new civilization (let’s say, Harappan II) unearths this ill-fated Digital Civilization and tries to find about our culture. They will locate; Black Bricks with steel covering at one end and Samsung 120 GB HDD inscribed on it; disc shining from both ends emitting rainbow like colors; black notebook with screen on one end and some alphabets and digits printed on other. Harappan II people would put in their heart and soul and would decipher nothing about our digital civilization, because everything is digital, perishable beyond recoverable.
Don’t know how to start preserving the current Digital Civilization as no one has so called “Time” to start inscribing the literature on the walls of the caves. But yes, if someone takes the agenda of preserving the literature, should not preserve things that would lead to our destruction, for example the great inventions and discoveries that make extensive use of natural resources. That would again lead to the vicious cycle of greed and competitive spirit. Instead preserve the importance of having faith in supreme, the Vedic texts that talks about spiritual energy, the Bible, the Buddhist Text and alike.
