What Does «Written In Stone» Mean?

What does «Written in stone» mean? Does it mean that data can be retrieved as long as it exists? Does information stored always have the possibility of retrieval? No. Case in point? Linear-A. Language, like anything, changes over time. If you try to read Old English (not necessarily written in Futhorc) and compare it to Modern English, you’ll no doubt see differences and, for the most part, speaking it would be analogous to speaking a different language, entirely. Obviously, Old English and Linear-A aren’t connected beyond the fact that they were used, linguistically, in the past, and are no longer used today. While we still have clay tablets that were written in Linear-A, nobody can interpret them; the language is still being deciphered. That leads us to the bigger topic at hand.

Everyone can make copies, backups of their phone, laptop, tablet, books, music, anything, but the thing about that is we can only access that data for as long as we have the methods to read the data. Sure, I still have some (several) 5¼” floppies, but without a 5¼” drive, I can’t access the data. That’s nothing to say of the fact that, unless they’re read from a compatible system, I’d simply get an «Unformatted Disk» error, or possibly the raw data, though it would certainly be scrambled and, likely, unreadable to humans. Sure, the data is there, but we can’t unlock it. The notion we have of preservation, I believe, is a somewhat inaccurate one, based entirely on the assumption that whatever we archive can always be retrieved, but that's not always the case. Linear-A, Hurrian Hymn №6, even the supposed VGA copy of the Windows 3.0 PC World Test Drive… so far, they’re lost to history. We don’t know how to read Linear-A, we don’t know the notation that Hurrian Hymn № 6 was written in or the frequency the notes and instruments were tuned to, and I have yet to see a copy of that software (believe me, I go down many a rabbit hole in my search for old software). Data retrieval and archival is much more complex than, say, making an extra copy of a piece of sheet music. Yes, it’s archived for the short-term, but things change over time. We do have the internet, nowadays, which helps with preservation (though modern technology is also a double-edged sword, primarily when DRM and copy protection become involved), but that’s only been existent since… if you wanna stretch it, ARPANET in the ‘60s.

True preservation, I believe, not only encompasses preserving the source, but making copies to adapt and be readable as time progresses as well, including making the data publicly available. For instance, if I were to make a language for a character to speak in (assume the character is an alien), and something happens to me, well… good luck getting any of the passwords to my computers, and I don’t generally put very much into the stories about such projects (with few exception), so that would likely become lost to time. On the other hand, if it were publicly available and had copies made continually over time that adapted to society and technology, we’d always have that data, as well as providing a gateway to learn or recreate the source materials, technology, or languages that would, otherwise, be lost.

Links - opens in new tab

• The Oldest (Known) Song of All Time - YouTube
• Linear A - English Wikipedia 
• Hurrian Songs - English Wikipedia
• Anglo-Saxon Runes - English Wikipedia
• Old English Latin Alphabet - English Wikipedia 
• Old English - English Wikipedia