rosetta

someone should build a highly redundant repository of all current human knowledge. the bulk of it could be redundant computer-based systems.

but the monument would have every current language written out in whatever the most long lasting material we have is - i'd say plastic, but that might melt.

anyway, in order to insure that whoever found this would know what the language sounded like, there would need to be some kind of binary way of representing sounds etched into the material - like a barcode. ideally, if someone dragged a stick across this, it would make a sound (that's not a bad idea by itself), that sound would be the same as the the words on the monument.

the phrase would be tough to come up with - it would want to include all sounds for every language. i imagine chinese would be the hardest to include.

the redundancy should go to the materials level - like the way corian always has the same surface, even when you sand it, the words should go all the way through the material, so even if chunks were lost, it would still be legible.

then of course there would be instructions on how to use the computer stuff, assuming it survived. the computer parts would be updated as technology improved.