Originally posted by AstroDave I am convinced some civilization 1000 years from now will have practically zero image/literary artifacts from us because all our storage formats will be obsolete/non-readable). Think about how we can read cuneiform stone tablets from thousands of years ago, and look at cave paintings from 20-30 thousand years ago. Nothing we are doing now will survive that long. I'm even doubtful about your Blu-rays disks.
I don't know; I imagine a sufficiently advanced civilization will have the capabilities to pull data from a 21st century SSD. They may not
be able to use it 'straight out of the box', but neither could 'modern' scholars read Cuneiform when first rediscovered. Similarly, many
trace fossils that are studied today using modern technology were virtually unrecognizable and unreadable a century or more ago.
Thus it's not unreasonable an advanced civilization may be able to pull data from current technology that we consider damaged
and/or otherwise unreadable.
To be sure, a physical picture will still be more immediate. Whether a box of paper photographs, (very perishable in the long term), or a box
of hard drives, (potentially obsolete and inaccessible for a long time until someone wants to 'science it'), represents the better long term
strategy remains to be seen. One thing's for certain; an awful lot of stone and clay tablets survived millennia of neglect. A reminder to
incorporate more imagery into my ceramics