Lifeboat Foundation InfoPreserver
By the Lifeboat Foundation Advisory Board including Frank D. Smith. This is an ongoing program so you may submit suggestions to programs@lifeboat.com.
Overview
While building and maintaining our InfoPreserver skills repository, the question arises, “Why do this at all?” This is an interesting question and one we hope to answer here. We have three main reasons that validate this activity.
The first is colonization efforts. It is a fact that the information we are collecting is as useful to a colonization effort as it is to a planetary civilization rebuild. Just the exercise of compiling this resource can teach us about the concepts and skills needed for a successful colony effort.
The second use is as insurance against many of the threats we study and attempt to mitigate in other Lifeboat Foundation programs. If some threat should occur and we are not successful it preventing it, InfoPreserver may be a key to our civilization's rebound. The difference brought by local access to these foundational skills and knowledge could reduce our main rebound to 20 years (one human generation at current lifespans) versus perhaps 200 years (ten generations) without this knowledge. This is a powerful potential use in itself.
The third validation is that the skills and information we gather are also directly useful toward creating sustainable systems for our existing civilization.
