🚀 go-pugleaf

>    2. Michael Brill's
>    talk was a discussion of how to design a marking for a nuclear waste
>    site so that populations 10,000 years in the future (the halflifes on
>    this stuff require thought that far out) would understand what is
>    buried there.  But the constraints are that we cannot assume
>    populations that far in the future will understnad our languages or
>    understand our cultural symbolism.  Further we have to somehow convey
>    that this stuff is meant to be BAD and that they should not even
>    explore the place.  They must understand to keep away.  The design
>    problem is "how do you convey such a message absent of language and
>    cultural symbolism?"

For those reading German, there is a whole book on the topic, edited by the
semiotician and linguist
Roland Posner: Warnungen an die ferne Zukunft: Atommuell als
Kommunikationsproblem. (Admonitions to the far future: nuclear waste as a
problem of communication). Muenchen, Raben-Verlag. 1990. There are English
summaaries of the 15 chapters.

The book contains chapters by, among others, Stanislaw Lem and Thomas Sebeok
and is based in part on an international enquete. Those far away people
must first of all understand that they have to read the message. In
addition it appears that this can only be assured within an enduring
communicative tradition. IN addition, there are lots of interesting
thoughts and facts.

Alfred Lang, Univ. of Bern
E-mail on Internet: lang@psy.unibe.ch