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[Baby crying, whale calls, music]
[Man speaking in foreign language]
[Woman speaking in foreign language]
Hello from the children of Planet Earth.
I'm Timothy Ferris and I produced the
so-called Golden Record on the Voyager spacecraft.
Sometimes people say, "Well, nowadays you could put a lot more information on
you know, the equivalent of a DVD or something," but we don't know how long
optical media will last. We know how long grooves
in metal last because we have a lot of historical record for that. In fact,
the origins of writing are recorded in Sumerian cuneiform
which are gouges made in clay. They're very stable for long periods of time.
So if I were making the Voyager record again today I would make it the same way.
I would make an analog record because I know it'll last a billion years. It can last
a billion years.
Of course, it might have been a little harder to master the record now than it was in 1977
when people are still making records.