This is one of my favourite questions. What is universal? How can we generate a "Rosetta Stone" that is truly universal and wholly comprehensible?

There isn't a concrete answer; it's up for debate because we simply do not know!

Here are two resources on the subject that I think are exceptionally interesting:

1. "This is Not a Place of Honor" by the U.S. Department of Energy's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. It's lengthy but I have attached the file of the report.

Basically, the US government was trying to come up with a way to mark a nuclear waste disposal site as dangerous to anyone who might approach it-- for as long as the waste would remain dangerous, ie., 10,000 years.

The trouble is, what language lasts for 10,000 years? The Nuclear Hazard symbol looks a little like an angel if you had never seen it before. They tried writing stories in pictures (a man approaches the site and becomes ill), but what if the culture read from bottom to top? It looks as though the man has found the fountain of youth. The WIPP team developed some truly fascinating approaches to the problem of communicating across the centuries-- partially through design, like spikes and the use of heat. It might not specifically illuminate your question, but I think it will help inform some of the thinking around this idea of telling a story or sending a message that is somehow beyond language itself.

2. The Ray Cat Solution. Yet another nuclear waste messaging project, the Human Interference Task Force, this effort considered the same issues as the above and arrived at a fascinating hypothetical solution. Arguing that the strongest item of human culture is folklore-- it is durable across generations, centuries, and language-- they proposed genetically modifying cats to glow when exposed to radiation. Then, they would spread folklore, saying basically: "where cats glow, you should not go!"

Here is the Wiki link with the summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Interference_Task_Force

I realize this strays a little from your core question, but I think reading through the WIPP report will help inspire further thinking on this question. Communication is more complex than we appreciate!

Didn't NASA attempt just this on a brass plaque fixed on a long, long distance space probe decades ago? I'm sure there must have been some reasoning behind that. And that reasoning probably doesn't need too much interpretation just yet!

Christopher NOCK

There are two wonderful NASA projects on this idea:

The Pioneer Plaque: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque

and

The Voyager Golden Record features greetings, music, and images in more than 55 languages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contents_of_the_Voyager_Golden_Record

Thank you Lisa Jane. I will be counting on you to clarify all my clouded thoughts, from now on!

So that might be something worth looking at in terms of the question.

NOCK

You are rigth, these projects are really interesting, although they do not quite match my requirements.

I thought of some kind of message someone could send to a less developed culture to transmit (or preserve) knowledge. Such a culture might be medieval for instance.

The problem might be that such a message is impossible to create without elementary units/symbols that might not be known by the culture.

Well, I'm afraid that's the best I can do on this one!

Good luck

NOCK

Daniel,

Lisa's done the heavy lifting with those two documents: well worth reading.

In addition, I recommend the Long Now foundation to you.

http://longnow.org/

One of their projects focuses on the transcription of information into a form that can persist over near-geologic timescales. The matter is *not* that of simply finding a sufficiently robust medium - and the book by Stewart Brand "The Clock of the Long Now" addresses this matter masterfully.

(Of Time and Bits is also worth a read)