I just watched a documentary about archeological digs in Iraq where they found over a million 3000-year-old clay tablets with ancient cuneiform writing on them. These tablets, having lain in the sand for three millennia begin to turn to dust within hours of their removal if not preserved and even with the best preservation they still degrade fairly rapidly. So, they use lasers to etch a hologram of each tablet on glass plates. This digital information can be transmitted over the internet.
This is kind of cool. To think 3D holograms of 3000-year-old written words and these holograms once on the internet will live in the web. The actual glass plates can survive for tens of thousands of years.
The holograms are so accurate that they can be examined under a microscope.
Since the information is digital it can be manipulated by a computer to decipher even the most eroded specimens.
Funny, as I write this little piece it dawns on me: I may be the only one on the planet who thinks this is cool. Oh, I suppose some of my fellow nerds might.
