Is Bluray the final physical media?

[rkelly17]

Cuneiform has got to be worse than Egyptian hieroglyphics.  Thinking about it, I suspect it must be some form of phonetic shorthand similar to Pittman.

Not sure what the nature of the alphabet is--I learned to read Hebrew many years ago, but that was as far as I got. I do know that most of the ancient Mesopotamian stuff found has been business and accounting: "Sam owes 200 measures of wheat to Joe."

[A Nonny Moose]

Yes, clear from something in Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance:

"i can write a washing bill in Babylonic Cuneiform
"And tell you every detail of Caractacus's uniform.
"But still, in matters vegetable, animal and mineral,
"I am the very model of a modern major general."

Wonder if they used something else for other communications and monuments.

[rkelly17]

Wonder if they used something else for other communications and monuments.

There are various epics (e.g., the Gilgamesh Epic) and monuments (those that haven't been destroyed recently) in cunieform, but I think that, as in most cultures, the mundane far outnumbers the heroic.

If you haven't come across it, you ought to find and read "Motel of the Mysteries," a spoof of archeology which records a future excavation of a shrine to the god Mo-Tel near the ancient site Tul-Sa.

[A Nonny Moose]

<snip>
If you haven't come across it, you ought to find and read "Motel of the Mysteries," a spoof of archeology which records a future excavation of a shrine to the god Mo-Tel near the ancient site Tul-Sa.

Parodies are always fun.  I think I've read something like it.  it was one of those far future things where the archaeologists were asking themselves "I wonder what they did here?", but I think the location was a howling desert that had to be Las Vegas.  I don't recall the title but it was quite serious, in a way.

There was a certain parallel to the Anasazi culture.

[rkelly17]

It is quite amazing what we scholars can make up from very little actual data. 

[A Nonny Moose]

Most people would say that a doctorate is knowing more and more about less and less until you finally know everything about nothing.  Having worked with a building or so full of doctoral and post-doctoral people, nothing could be farther from the truth, but they do get into some pretty arcane things.

One course I took in synthetic geometry wound up in a topological derivation of general relativity without one line of higher algebraic text.  it was a fascinating exercise.  It's easy once you get to tensors.