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Books

A Library of Books No One Can Read For 100 Years (bbc.com) 80

Posted by EditorDavid from the unread-poets-society dept.
Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: The BBC looks at a 100-year art project in which famous authors write books that will not be published until the year 2113. An annual ceremony takes place near a forest of sapling trees which will be turned into paper in the year 2113 and then used for printing those books.
From the article: It began with the author Margaret Atwood, who wrote a story called Scribbler Moon, and since then the library has solicited submissions from all over the world... All the manuscripts will be stored for almost a century inside locked glass drawers in a hidden corner of Oslo's main public library, within a small, wooden repository called the Silent Room. In 2114, the drawers will be unlocked, and the trees chopped down — and 100 stories hidden for a century will finally be published in one go.
It's part of Scottish artist Katie Paterson's fascination with the passage of time: One of her first works, Vatnajokull (the sound of) [included] a phone number that anyone could call to listen to an Icelandic glacier melting. Dial the number, and you'd be routed to a microphone beneath the water in the Jökulsárlón lagoon on Iceland's south coast, where blue-tinged icebergs calve away and float towards the sea....

One of her most recent exhibitions in Edinburgh, Requiem at Ingleby Gallery, featured 364 vials of crushed dust, each one representing a different moment in deep time. Vial #1 was a sample of presolar grains older than the Sun, followed by powdered four-billion-year-old rocks, corals from prehistoric seas, and other traces of the distant past. A few visitors were invited to pour one of the vials into a central urn: when I was there in June, I poured #227, a four-million-year-old Asteroidea fossil, a kind of sea star....

Of all her work exploring the long-term though, Future Library is the project most likely to be remembered across time itself. Indeed, it was deliberately created to be. And this year its longevity was ensured: Oslo's city leaders signed a contract formally committing them and their successors to protect the forest and library over the next 100 years.
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A Library of Books No One Can Read For 100 Years More

A Library of Books No One Can Read For 100 Years

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  • No one will buy them... (Score:3)

    by franzrogar ( 3986783 ) on Monday July 04, 2022 @03:48AM (#62671344)

    ...'cause most of them will be already public domain by then so people just have to wait for them to be copied over The Gutenberg Project.

    • Re:No one will buy them... (Score:5, Informative)

      by sd4f ( 1891894 ) on Monday July 04, 2022 @05:05AM (#62671464)
      Technically incorrect. It probably varies by jurisdiction, but if it remains unpublished then the copyright is indefinite. Copyright time limits only carry once something has been published.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Potor ( 658520 )
        It's a lonely art correcting the keyboard warrior.
        • Although some works published a hundred years ago retain value, the trend of the upcoming threats to civilization, and to much of life on the planet, will probably have materialized well before a century has passed. Books themselves, presuming the frenetic pace of information structures advance at the current or even more rapid rate may seem an ancient and extinct art as information techniques develop in yet to be visualized novel directions. It seems to me a most odd effort.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Potor ( 658520 )
            Today's "books" merely take the form of the codex printed on paper. Although this was not the case for, e.g., the ancient Romans, they still had a word for "book." In other words, do not confuse the concept with the medium. Moreover, I think it highly counter-intuitive to assume that paper codices will disappear in a hundred years. And even if they loose their dominance, or stronger, even if they will no longer be the dominant, or even a, commercial format, this project is clearly nothing commercial.

            • Re:No one will buy them... (Score:4, Insightful)

              by JanSand ( 5746424 ) on Monday July 04, 2022 @11:53AM (#62672286) Homepage
              From several processes currently operating in our current the likelihood that present civilization will destroy itself grows with every passing day and little effective social energy is evident to prevent this. I merely point out probabilities, not make predictions.
              • Far more likely that nobody will give a crap about what some random authors had to say 100 years in the past. The issues that seemed so important to them will be quant nonsense to people in the future.
                • Considering what might happen to the planet in 100 years, just as likely that there will be a great feeling of nostalgia for what we should have or could have done, The future contempt for the current generation of world leaders will surpass all other emotions.
                  • I guess I wasn't direct enough. When I said "far more likely", I was saying that whatever you think is going to happen to the planet isn't going to, and more than likely things nobody expects will happen instead.
                    That's the way it always goes.
                    • Always is always tricky and inconsistent, no doubt, so I deal in sometimes which is inconsistently inconsistent and more domesticated. It wags its tail to get a bite at my hot dog and never attempts intimidation by quoting Latin. Wuff!

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Potor ( 658520 )
                You don't pass the Turing Test.
                • Since the bulk of humanity has no chance at all to pass the Turing Test, I rank as rather normal.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pjt33 ( 739471 )

        Are you sure? In general, copyright depends on the date of the author's death rather than publication, so it makes no sense to say that term limits only apply once a work is published. I can see that this might have been the case in countries with fixed term copyright lengths, but there are very few countries left which aren't signatories to the Berne Convention.

      • And since this is the age of the internet, copyright doesn't matter. What matters is whether someone cares enough to leak it before publication and whether someone cares enough to actually read it.

        I have a hunch that a lack of the latter two is more "protection" of that piece of art than any copyright.

      • This also depends upon jurisdiction. For example such perpetual copyright no longer happens in the UK.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sd4f ( 1891894 )
          Yea, you're correct. Australia only changed this in 2019, so merely a few years ago, but I thought it was still the case.

  • That'll Go Well (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Kunedog ( 1033226 )

    The BBC looks at a 100-year art projectin which famous authors write books that will not be published until the year 2113.

    Have these authors thought about what they're setting themselves up for? If anything like Twitter and cancel mobs still exist, these will go over as well as a finished HP Lovecraft work being released for the first time today.

    In fact, I though of another thing: unless this project were to digitally sign its contents today (or otherwise prove they were unaltered for 100 years), I wouldn't trust its operatives (or their successors) not to "sanitize" these works or just replace them with whatever propagand

    • In fact, I though of another thing: unless this project were to digitally sign its contents today (or otherwise prove they were unaltered for 100 years), I wouldn't trust its operatives (or their successors) not to "sanitize" these works or just replace them with whatever propaganda eventually suits them best at release time.

      Do we have any way to sign documents which we have any hope of not being trivial to forge in 100 years time?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jd ( 1658 )

        NIST is currently reviewing post-quantum crypto signatures. In theory, any of them should be good enough, if you digitally sign the scanned pages then ascii armour the signatures onto a final page.

        • Don't worry, practical quantum computers capable of sneezing their way through your encryption will be only ten years away for at least the next hundred years.

      • Moreover, do we have any way to sign documents in a way that someone hellbent on "sanitizing" them cares?

    • Reminds of J.D. Salinger writing for the future generation(s): https://www.smithsonianmag.com... [smithsonianmag.com].

    • The BBC looks at a 100-year art projectin which famous authors write books that will not be published until the year 2113.

      Have these authors thought about what they're setting themselves up for? If anything like Twitter and cancel mobs still exist, these will go over as well as a finished HP Lovecraft work being released for the first time today.

      In fact, I though of another thing: unless this project were to digitally sign its contents today (or otherwise prove they were unaltered for 100 years), I wouldn't trust its operatives (or their successors) not to "sanitize" these works or just replace them with whatever propaganda eventually suits them best at release time.

      Yep. Heck, these guys crap themselves over Obama's early 2012 position on marriage. If the works aren't sanitized before release, this should go well ...

    • Re:That'll Go Well (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Monday July 04, 2022 @08:43AM (#62671884)

      Have these authors thought about what they're setting themselves up for?

      They are setting themselves up for nothing. They won't care, they will be dead. And if HP Lovecraft's work was published today with the full knowledge that they were written 100 years ago then it would be nothing more than a historical record.

      "Cancel mobs" don't exist. Ever since humans have first communicated there has always been disagreements, ever since we have had the ability to trade there have been boycotts.

      Call it what it is: One person telling another to boycott something for some reason, a practice which has existed for millennia. Stop feeding the right wing culture war by pretending this is new, related to twitter, or something to do with "cancel culture".

    • Have these authors thought about what they're setting themselves up for? If anything like Twitter and cancel mobs still exist, these will go over as well as a finished HP Lovecraft work being released for the first time today.

      The authors will presumably be dead before the books are read, unless someone rips their way in there during a period of intense theocratic purging to get some unnecessary additional justification to attack the people who wrote their contents. (Margaret Atwood would presumably already have already gone up against the wall for The Handmaid's Tale. No further evidence is necessary, your esteemed and highly religious honor.

      unless this project were to digitally sign its contents today (or otherwise prove they were unaltered for 100 years), I wouldn't trust its operatives (or their successors) not to "sanitize" these works or just replace them with whatever propaganda eventually suits them best at release time.

      Absolutely. One should always publish a crypto fingerprint for this reason.

  • Reminds me of JD Salinger (Score:3)

    by Camembert ( 2891457 ) on Monday July 04, 2022 @04:27AM (#62671402)
    The late JD Salinger apparently had a number of finished novels in his safe. He stopped publishing in 1963. His heirs, if I remember correctly, aim to publish some new work over the next 10 years; though he wanted it to be published later even to ensure that his critics would be long dead. I am curious about it, I loved some his stories like A Perfect Day for Banana Fish, etc. But at the same time wondering if new stories would still have that appeal.

  • Locked GLASS drawers? (Score:3)

    by diffract ( 7165501 ) on Monday July 04, 2022 @04:42AM (#62671422)
    Doesn't seem secure to me
  • If mankind is likely to face the risk of extinction in a hundred years, who will have time or money to print, sell, or buy century-old books?
  • I hope in 100 years , chopping down trees to print novelty books will look abhorent and people will look back at our barberic time when they thought this was "acceptable behavior".

    • A fair concern and perhaps an added dimension to the artsy side of the project.

      But don't worry! By then technology will have advanced so far that we can trivially encode each book onto the DNA of a cell of a leaf of a tree. One leaf should be enough for all contributed works.

      The real trick would be to encode it on the DNA of a seed such that it would grow a tree where the text of the book is already imprinted, not requiring any cutting down and processing.

    • Err, trees are a renewable resource. European tree cover has actually increased by 30% over the last 30 years

      • European tree cover has actually increased by 30% over the last 30 years

        Cover is valuable and worth tracking, but what we really want to know from the current standpoint is what's happened to total tree biomass...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rossz ( 67331 )

      Trees are a renewable resource.

  • Who will remember this in 100 years ? (Score:3)

    by bsdetector101 ( 6345122 ) on Monday July 04, 2022 @05:53AM (#62671542)
    will be stored for almost a century inside locked glass drawers in a hidden corner of Oslo's main public library, within a small, wooden repository. It will be forgotten !

    • And in 5000 years it will be discovered, people will notice what kind of effort has been taken to ensure it was sealed properly, think it's some kind of holy book and pretend we believed the bollocks in there as gospel, maybe even creating a new religion around it.

      I wouldn't be surprised if a few religions started like that, anyway.

    • I don't think this will be any more forgotten than time capsules or cornerstones. I can't speak for elsewhere but in the US time capsules are popular (frequently embedded in cornerstones) and there is ceremony around opening and revealing their (usually mundane) contents. Since this is getting press, and there's a dedicated area of a major library dedicated to it, I doubt it will be forgotten. It's quite possible no one will care in 100 years, but I doubt it will be forgotten.

    • It will be forgotten !

      We've opened time capsules older than 100 years. Don't worry just because you have memory problems doesn't mean someone else won't manage this for you.

    • Yep. We see stories all the time about "lost" manuscripts or films. My first thought was that this is pretension on a level with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • What's so special about these? It's just an extreme case of artificial scarcity. If I were asked to contribute to this, I'd submit my own version of the "Chicken" paper. IMHO the chance of any of these stories being revealed in a hundred years is very slim to none, but if they did, it would be hilarious.

  • Obligatory "The Onion" reference (Score:3)

    by Laxator2 ( 973549 ) on Monday July 04, 2022 @06:50AM (#62671636)

    This is nothing but Time Capsule craze done BBC-style.

    I think the people of the future will react the way described here:

    https://www.theonion.com/newly... [theonion.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mccalli ( 323026 )
      BBC has a relatively long history of this - the children's programme Blue Peter used to do this from time to time. I remember the 1984 one, but the first is 1971 [thesimplethings.com].

  • Utterly pointless (Score:3)

    by ClueHammer ( 6261830 ) on Monday July 04, 2022 @06:55AM (#62671650)
    This is a great way to publish crap and ensure you dead before they notice.

    • If you think Margaret Atwood publishes crap, no one here can help you.

      • > If you think Margaret Atwood publishes crap, no one here can help you.

        I found some good some not so good, so I'm sure she can also write crap. What I don't really get is why write a story and then make a point of not letting people read it. Which makes me wonder if the stories vetted, because I wouldn't mind if some turned out to be a form of protest against the whole idea of the project.

  • Interesting idea (Score:3)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@ y a hoo.com> on Monday July 04, 2022 @06:58AM (#62671654) Homepage Journal

    But why not print the books now on something like Do paper from Vietnam (life expectancy 800 years), which will boost poor economies considerably?

  • In 50 years there is a Forest fire caused by left Radicals and climate change. The entire Forest burns down. The end.

    • In 50 years there is a Forest fire caused by left Radicals and climate change. The entire Forest burns down. The end.

      It's more likely the fire will be caused by libertarian-disguised authoritarianism. The fires here in California are caused by a lifestyle fundamentally incompatible with the terrain, biology and climate of the region, and laws enacted to protect it. The people who lived here before used to do extensive controlled burns as part of a general forest management scheme which was successful for millennia, but that doesn't jibe with the idea of building a bunch of flammable homes in the woods. The idea of private

  • In 100 years, nobody is going to be cutting down trees for paper. They will be needed to burn for heat and cooking in our post fossil fuel utopia.

  • ...to put a paper-making machine in there and a printer and a toner-maker and a ...

  • The way things are going, it won't last that long before someone either destroys it or opens it and sells NFT's of the contents online, along with a mini-series about breaking in and opening it. Available on the dark web of the time.

    • Tit won't last that long before someone either destroys it or opens it and sells NFT's of the contents online, along with a mini-series about breaking in and opening it

      A series about stealing it would probably be of more interest to the public than whatever these stories are actually about.

  • The trees will likely be more valuable than authors nobody reads nor cares about anymore.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kackle ( 910159 )
      That's the interesting thing, isn't it? Chopping down a century-old tree for almost a gag is a little odd.

      We have a sickly tree that the arborist says could be 275 years old. That's pre-America. It sickens me that we should have paid it more attention to keep it healthy on our watch.

    • Or maybe it will be illegal to cut down trees. As in, for every tree you cut down, they will kill you*.

      * cloning techniques will be very advanced in 2113.

      Also, "a 100 years from now" is 2122, this project's target is 2113, meaning Slashdot is NINE FUCKING YEARS LATE on reporting this. Is that slow enough for a Guinness World Record?

  • Just megaliths and flint tools?

    What form the modern age would survive past an ice age?
    Why are we building stuff if it's just all going to get wiped to leave the next civilization puzzling over a few bits of plastic here and there?

  • What is paper? And how do we make it?

  • When your books are so bad you want to be long gone by the time they're printed.

  • This is one of the most idiotic ideas I've heard of recently. What is wrong with these people?
  • I could remember when one of my bank accounts had ( INSF ) payment made and I didn't notice until it was already 30 days past due already , i had paid the account in full before , Just that one account that had a 30 days past due added to my credit report which devastated my credit score by 73 points and brought my credit score under 600 . Then I was back at square one from 5 years of rebuilding my credit in a matter of 3 months. To my very worries I talked to my colleague at work about my credit issues a

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