>We really need something that could store data for 80 years minimum.
Minidisc. I have discs that are 30+ years old that have been abused their entire life and still work fine with no noticeable degradation. I specifically choose this format to archive audio because the disc housing works great for environmental protection and I’d eventually like to give my music collection to my children/grand children. The discs can also store data. My minidisc player shows up as removable storage device when I plug it into my computer so I can throw anywhere from about 140mb-1Gb(hi-MD) per disk.
Officially they’re rated to about 50 years, but if you sealed them and stored them properly then they could easily make it past 80 years.
The trouble is that the players likely won't last as long as the media. And nobody's making new players. Microfilm has the advantage that cameras continue to be relevant and fundamentally the reader is just a camera.
I have working players that are older than I am. They’re mechanically very simple, just lube the gears up occasionally and keep them clean. They use the same laser that a cd player does, and the service manuals for most devices are available for free online and they have part numbers for all of the ICs, and wiring diagrams and schematics for the all of the components.
An enterprising individual could probably clone an old device and flash a stock firmware to it if they really wanted to. The functionality that goes first in older devices is usually the write head, but you’d probably still be able to read discs for decades if you took care of the device and stored it well.
The minidisc community online is also very active and people are active working to reverse engineer virtually every aspect of the players and disc writing software, and some people even produce new drop-in replacement parts for the components that tend to fail like OLED displays, etc.
Medieval peasants worked about 1080 hours a year or an average of 20 hours a week. I wont speculate on how happy they were, but they were probably able to spend more time at home with their family/friends and local spiritual community and probably got more sleep than most people do today.
We may have better hygiene and live longer on average compared to then, but most of our lives are spent away from most of the people we care about/take care of.
I generally agree with this sentiment, but I think it's important to recognise that this ISN'T an accurate portrayal. Yes, they worked less in service to others... but then they also had to go work their own plot for their own food, etc. They likely laboured as much as we do, once you include the things you need to do to live and participate in society.
Now, how it affects your mental health to do work on behalf of yourself vs. on behalf of others is a different question.
I think it’s because there’s a lot of ambiguity and “best guesses” in medical science and there’s no equivalent to programming documentation or manpages for medical treatment. Building code is for all intents and purposes a pretty objective and repeatable field of study. Whereas I would liken a medical treatment more to penetration testing because you’re trying to get an established logical system to accept new input/logic (medicine/procedures) rather than trying to build a logical system from scratch (or with building blocks)
Minidisc. I have discs that are 30+ years old that have been abused their entire life and still work fine with no noticeable degradation. I specifically choose this format to archive audio because the disc housing works great for environmental protection and I’d eventually like to give my music collection to my children/grand children. The discs can also store data. My minidisc player shows up as removable storage device when I plug it into my computer so I can throw anywhere from about 140mb-1Gb(hi-MD) per disk.
Officially they’re rated to about 50 years, but if you sealed them and stored them properly then they could easily make it past 80 years.