Like many people living in a technology world, I recently upgraded my laptop and some of its peripherals. While doing so, I found a laptop hardrive from when I replaced the failing one in my MacBook last summer. If somehow I came to lose all other back-ups, I could possibly retrieve some crucial data from that wonderous piece of technology.
Today, I decided to throw it away and just to make sure that nobody would access my data, I tried to break the case. To my surprise, that tiny thing was as solid as a brick!
I started to feel something...
In looking at that jewel of our civilization, I began to imagine people in the future, digging and finding my throw away. Would it still contain information that would be beneficial to them? Or parts on a circuit board? Or the metals that it's made of?
Since we don't know how to properly dispose of, or recycle, certain materials, or don't yet have use for other ones, how can we safely and re-usably dispose of such materials for the benefit of future generations?
If indeed we run out of oil, the exploitation of our mineral and other resources will come to a halt. Machineries and processing plants will cease to function.
When these times arrive, we may need to dig in our refuse to find all of the things that we need to sustain a world heavily dependent on technology, metal, plastic and heavy medicine.
While reflecting on this, I wanted to carefully wrap my little hardrive before throwing it away, so it could be retrieved, in as usable a condition as possible, by future generation in need of either raw or rare material, or looking for clues of why their ancestors came to extinction.
Make decisions to benefit at least seven generations into the future..
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