You should post more interesting things like this that I can easily steal and use for class discussions!

By Tony on 02.06.06 2:30 pm

I would have at least one element be something indicating fission – you can draw a picture of the process of uranium decaying. This of course assumes that the next creatures to stumble upon the site are sapient, sighted, and scientific, so others have to deisgn other methods. There’s no hope for wildlife though.

It’s reminiscent of the plaque that was put on the Voyagers.

By zandperl on 02.06.06 7:16 pm

I think twin statues of Carrot Top and Pauly Shore would inspire enough fear to keep anyone away.

By Dan on 02.07.06 2:14 pm

Andria’s comment about the Voyager probe kind of reminds me of another concern here: like the plaque on the probe, all the solutions to this problem I’ve heard so far assume that whoever comes across this next will be able to see at all. NASA at least covered its bases by including a record with some classical music. A clever inventor recently realized that you could make a device that emits an irritating sound that only kids can hear, which will discourage loitering around convenience stores; maybe this project should be talking to folks like him and not just “visual people.”

By Jason on 02.09.06 11:23 am

Actually, I think the Voyager plaque was etched into the metal, so a non-visual species might still be able to read it.

While browsing for that info, I found out info about Voyager’s power sources. I thought Galileo (to Jupiter) was the first probe with a mini nuclear powerplant, but it turns out the first mission using nuclear power was actually Pioneer 10.

By zandperl on 02.09.06 7:29 pm

I am not sure I understand… The reason that we’re worried about the 10,000 year thing is that whoever encounters the waste site might not know english, or even be human, right?

But if those that encounter it are anything like humans, I don’t think there is anything we could do to stop them from wanting to know what was in there… If they udnerstood the warning, it seems that someone would inevitably interpret the warning as a trick to keep people from something cool. If they didn’t understand the warning then they’d have no reason not to explore the area.

And even if the creatures were ‘sapient, sighted, and scientific’, I don’t feel like we could guarantee that the way we think of symbolism would have anything to do with the way they do.

Like what if in the future defecation were a way to say ‘I love you’ or whatever.

Sounds like a challenge indeed.

By Jordan on 02.10.06 1:35 pm

Not to insult the graphic design community (I know they are very very busy working on changing their name and creating a code of ethics that none of them will follow–thanks Jason for those updates by the way…I really enjoyed them…), but I don’t think the problem is to create something that will be able to be read in 10,000 years.

I think that the real problem is to create something that will, let’s say every 100 year’s be updated.

Something like a sign that says, if you can read the language on this sign, but don’t understand it, please spend sometime figuring out how by using the following resources. (At this spot I would put a lot of resources–think rosetta stone with Chinese characters, the english alphabet and a bunch of other stuff…)and then the instruction should be. Alright now that you’ve figure out how to read this, please understand this is a terrible bad place and you need to erect a sign that will tell people like you that it is dangerous and they should stay away. Because language and design ideas are always evolving, people should be building a system here, not a design. (Consider that the nazi’s co-opted a lot of different symbols…so to see some of them in the 1800s is a lot different from seeing them in 1960…the same could be true for anything that the designers come up with.

That’s my two cents.

Chris

By Chris on 02.11.06 8:35 am

[...] am constantly amused, occasionally frustrated, and even sometimes impressed by the audacity of graphic designers. Spend a few minutes flipping through a major design criticism [...]

By doombot » Uh oh! It’s the Design Police! on 01.17.08 2:24 pm