The Fate of Knowledge in a Post-Collapse World

Imagine a scenario where our civilization collapses, plunging us into another dark age. What remnants might remain after a few centuries or even a millennium? Reflecting on ancient civilizations, we primarily see enduring stone structures and scattered artifacts. Today, however, most of our existence is digital. If we lost all our online data, the disappearance would resemble a catastrophe akin to the loss of the Library of Alexandria, multiplied many times over. Frederick Campagna, in his book Prophetic Culture, highlights the vulnerability of the 'treasure of our society' resting on fragile technology.

"In a world where delicate electronic components deteriorate rapidly, maintaining them without our complex systems becomes impossible. Digital content is even more perishable, risking the total erasure of our cultural legacy. Once the physical conditions supporting our technology fail, the digital repositories we rely on will vanish without a trace. Unlike ancient papyrus scrolls, our vast digital culture hangs by a thread, reliant on the ongoing stability of our technological and economic systems. When this civilization's essence finally fades, its data-driven treasures will be among the first casualties."

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe plunged into a dark age where knowledge and technology were largely forgotten. It was through Islamic scholars that much of this knowledge was ultimately revived, leading to the Renaissance and modern advancements. Without their preservation efforts, we might still be languishing in obscurity, as suggested by Graeber and Wengrow in The Dawn of Everything.

Unlike previous civilizations, our globalized world means a collapse would have universal repercussions. There may not be a bastion of knowledge elsewhere to carry on our legacy. The remnants left behind would be disjointed fragments or entirely lost. Instead of a mere 900-year dark age, we could face a 9,000-year absence of knowledge unless we can find a way to document and preserve our learning in durable formats.

The challenges we face are numerous. What do we choose to preserve? Which materials should we use? What language will the future inheritors understand? This dilemma also poses challenges for scientists trying to create warning signs for nuclear waste that will make sense ten millennia from now, or astrophysicists sending messages into space, such as the Golden Record. Ultimately, we must confront the question: how do we communicate with the future?

Isaac Asimov’s renowned science fiction series Foundation, recently adapted for television, delves into these themes. The narrative follows Hari Seldon, a mathematician who foresees the impending collapse of a galactic empire. Drawing inspiration from Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Seldon, whose predictive model of 'psychohistory' is influenced by thinkers like Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee, recognizes the inevitability of this destruction. Addressing the imperial court, he states:

"The impending ruin is not an isolated event but the culmination of a complex narrative that commenced centuries ago, and its pace is only quickening. The decline and fall of the Galactic Empire is a mathematical prediction. I hold no moral judgments, though I personally regret this outlook. Even if the Empire is deemed undesirable (a claim I do not make), the resulting chaos would be far worse. It is this chaos that my project aims to combat. The Empire will fade, taking with it all that is good. Its amassed knowledge will erode, and the order it established will disappear. Interstellar conflicts will become endless, trade will diminish, populations will dwindle, and planets will disconnect from the galaxy's core."

Seldon’s initiative, termed 'Foundation,' is dedicated to safeguarding knowledge:

"The sum of human understanding exceeds that of any individual or even thousands. When our social structure crumbles, science will fragment into countless pieces. People will only grasp minute aspects of knowledge and be rendered ineffective. These fragments will fade through generations unless we compile a comprehensive summary of all knowledge now. Future generations will build upon this foundation instead of rediscovering it from scratch. One millennium of knowledge preservation could replace thirty thousand years of rediscovery."

While Seldon’s ambition is both grand and somewhat pessimistic, he recognizes the inevitability of collapse but aims to consolidate vast amounts of information to shorten the duration of chaos. Written in the early twentieth century, Asimov envisioned this knowledge preservation as an encyclopedic endeavor — 'The Encyclopaedia Galactica' (later parodied by Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). In today's digital age, reliance on services like Google and Wikipedia may make the idea of a physical encyclopedia seem outdated, yet, as discussed, these very services would likely be among the first casualties in a civilizational collapse.

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