[Wolfhart Willimczik (OP)]

We would be at least 1000 years further if there would be no great losses of scientific knowledge mostly due to wars, cold wars, political reasons, supressions etc.
(Did you know for instance that the SSD/STASI had an entire division for destroying scientific knowledge together with the scientists itself?)
We loose right now a lot of scientific knowledge – and nobody cares.
Now we have the internet and could storage the knowledge from every human on this earth, but nobody is doing this. (Homepages disappear with the owner.)

[daveshorts]

There are things like archive.org and the big libraries are doing it to some extent - I think the British Library just got some responsibilities in that direction. But storing large quantities of digital data for a long time is an unsolved problem.
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/naked-scientists/show/20130321/

[CliffordK]

Isn't that what libraries and journals are for?
Although, I can imagine issues as we transition from printed materials to digital materials.  Imagine the chaos if Wikipedia shut down.  What about some new electronic-only journal?

Perhaps the problem is not scientific knowledge in general, but rather individual knowledge.  With mortality, we loose information with each successive generation.  And, even in my own case, I don't have every note that I've written or photo I've taken.  Moving from organization to organization, computer to computer, house to house, much is always "left behind" or thrown away.

And, of course, there are always computer crashes, fires, and etc.

[Bored chemist]

We would be at least 1000 years further if there would be no great losses of scientific knowledge mostly due to wars, cold wars, political reasons, supressions etc.
(Did you know for instance that the SSD/STASI had an entire division for destroying scientific knowledge together with the scientists itself?)
We loose right now a lot of scientific knowledge – and nobody cares.
Now we have the internet and could storage the knowledge from every human on this earth, but nobody is doing this. (Homepages disappear with the owner.)

OK, first cite some evidence for the 1000 year assertion.
Next, perhaps you should look at the effects of war on scientific discovery.
The cold war gave us space technology.
WWII gave us radar miniaturised electronics, microwaves and a lot of other things too.
It's true that the Stasi destroyed scientific.
You might want to consider how well that worked out for them.

[Wolfhart Willimczik (OP)]

OK, first cite some evidence for the 1000 year assertion.
Next, perhaps you should look at the effects of war on scientific discovery.
The cold war gave us space technology.
WWII gave us radar miniaturised electronics, microwaves and a lot of other things too.
It's true that the Stasi destroyed scientific.
You might want to consider how well that worked out for them.

It is certainly my fault if everybody thinks in a direction diametral to that what I meant.
I forgot to say…except everything to kill each other. I know that wars gave as many things, what we can use in peace times. Others get lost. Getting lost means per definition we have no record of it. This are the things I mean, but you want that I show you in black and weiß.
It starts already here writing in English. I had the perfect translation program for Windows 3.5 – not any more, because it wont run in the new windows. It was developed by a physicist in Switzerland and called “witchpen”. Now there is no program coming even close. It depended all on one man! Most people don’t’ even know that there was even a program you could write some words in German, some words in English – just how you know it and the program made it right during writing! And it learned new words automatically without doing anything…You only write what you just know. Now I have to stop at every word O don’t know and look it up…weiß - .
There are 100 000 other cases of loss – just now under our eyes, which we can’t see.
Hundred years later it will be reinvented like the concrete, which the old Romans developed. Then there was no concrete or beton any more on earth. It had to be reinvented. There is no record of the knowledge. We only know it in this case, because the coliseum is still standing in Rom and everybody can touch it. How many other things are lost which are not that visible? Nobody know it. We can only say it is more than everybody can imagine.
Only the few things we do know shed a dim light on mankind’s saving of knowledge.
The old Greek had a good understanding of the elements, the earth and the solar system, but it was hard to put it all in stone.
The church had the monopoly for saving knowledge and their distribution. To make it comfortable for everybody knowledge was simplified - as today in Wikipedia - to a point that the earth was again a disc in the middle of everything.
It took over 1000 years that science could strive again. We lost over 1000 years on science.
And today it is worse. The Stasi destroyed everything not war important.
Of course the communists must go down with this method, (I helped) but what about the scientific findings of all the scientists behind the wall? I know personnel some deserving a Nobel price, but ending up in a madhouse etc. I by myself posted desperately my work from1966, because it was never published and will soon disappear together with me.
Many things, which will be considered very useful in 50 or 100 years, are ignored – on the end destroyed today.
Since nobody is able to decide what is worth to be saved and what not, we have to save safe every scientific finding somewhere and somehow. That’s what I am talking about, all the things which get never published. (How long will this forum be saved?)

[CliffordK]

Certainly there was some stagnation in growth between the fall of the Roman Empire, and the Renaissance.  Some knowledge was undoubtedly lost.  But, it may have been a socio-economic/religious environment that did not foster innovation. 

Then, perhaps there was a devolution of language during the Middle Ages, with a select few monopolizing the written language.  At least in Italy, travel a few hundred miles, and it was as if people spoke entirely a different language. 

The Renaissance, then not only brought the printing press, and the increased availability of books, but also authors beginning to write in the language of the people.  And, of course, an increased interest in science, and even questioning the religious truths.

You could say 1000 years of progress was lost, but not just to "forgetting", but rather to a lack of a forward push.

We now have the capability to "remember" everything that anybody ever writes, from first grade to the end of their life.  But, I'm not entirely certain that I would like everything that I've written to be remembered. 

Certainly many things just get forgotten, in part because nobody thinks to look for them. 

And, of course, one can have a wonderful NEW idea, only to find that someone, somewhere, already thought of it.  Perhaps one could foster a new era of information sharing, but too many people try to restrict access to information that they feel they've invested in. 

I do wonder what will happen as 100+ yr old copyrights expire, but by that time, so much information is obsolete.

[Wolfhart Willimczik (OP)]

You could say 1000 years of progress was lost, but not just to "forgetting", but rather to a lack of a forward push.

We now have the capability to "remember" everything that anybody ever writes, from first grade to the end of their life.  But, I'm not entirely certain that I would like everything that I've written to be remembered. 

Certainly many things just get forgotten, in part because nobody thinks to look for them. 

Did I say only by “forgetting”? This would be a mistake. I meant – mostly by wars etc.

You are right if you say: Society…”did not foster innovation”.
I lived in such regime in East-Germany and all inventions I made are lost.
After I showed one in TV I was expelled out of the academy of science and jailed.
See

But what nobody know – not even believe – is the fact that the SSD/Stasi/KGB prevent still today the use of any of my inventions. There is only my linear generator used in Australia, because there are no communists in leading positions…
See:
http://www.wolfhartindustries.com/otherinv.htm [nofollow]
And this is only from one scientist; perhaps more than 100 000 are out there, not seen by anybody.
All these inventions proved to be better than what is on the market, but they will soon all disappear totally, because there is not a single website where you can upload important information for the future. Everything must be reinvented – mostly 100 years or more later.
Of course we must not remember everything written, said or sung. Only who wants can upload something to the website “timecapsule.com” – if it would exist.
Oops – I just invented this name and it exist already, but it is not exactly what I mean.
Perhaps Google will do it. 

[graham.d]

It's not my field but to me your inventions are impressive and seem quite original. I am sorry to hear how you were either ignored or exploited by a corrupt and inefficient regime. To go back to your question, I think it is true that many ideas and inventions have been lost in the past (the destruction of the library at Alexandria must be a key event here) but I think the world is getting better at (at least) preserving ideas. I think the problem now is often how to recognise the good ideas from the vast numbers of bad ones (or simply ones that are not as good). Often the only way to promote an idea is to get sufficient funding to promote and manufacture some item that exploits the concepts. There are arguably quite a few cases where the less good concept wins just because it has had better promotion. If it is more of a theoretical concept there may be, at the time, no means to exploit it for any practical use. I think this is true particularly in the "pure" sciences and mathematics. New ideas have to be recorded and (hopefully) recognised in the future.

I work in the semiconductor industry where I think, generally, new ideas are exploited quickly although this is also not without problems. I had an internet conversation once with a guy who claimed to be an electronics engineer but who believed the advances in semiconductors had to have come from aliens (i.e. from beings on other planets). Yes, he really believed this! But having been in the business for over 40 years I have experienced the advances of technology step by step and can say there is no magic, just a lot of good engineering, determination and a lot of money.

[CliffordK]

As BC mentioned, War is a double edged sword.

There are many inventions used in the civilian life today that have direct roots in military engineering and design.  There is a lot of money available to make the better killing machine.

Here are a few inventions and concepts with direct military ties.  Some would have been eventually discovered for civilian use, but when?

Assembly Line and interchangeable parts.
Steel clad ships.
Rockets
Jets
Computers
Atomic Energy
Transportation, communication, and an interstate road network.

While there may be some repressive regimes, and perhaps too much money invested in building the better gun, we would likely be decades behind without military investment, perhaps even more. 

In many senses, the USA would not exist without military conquest, and certainly the English colonies would have developed differently without the military.

[JimBob]

There is a repository on Spitsbergen for this OR biological samples - can't remember which

[Wolfhart Willimczik (OP)]

It's not my field but to me your inventions are impressive and seem quite original. I am sorry to hear how you were either ignored or exploited by a corrupt and inefficient regime. To go back to your question, I think it is true that many ideas and inventions have been lost in the past (the destruction of the library at Alexandria must be a key event here) but I think the world is getting better at (at least) preserving ideas. I think the problem now is often how to recognise the good ideas from the vast numbers of bad ones (or simply ones that are not as good). ...

Why do you see a problem? I see a golden information age.
We are not any more in the stone age where it took hours to put few letters in stone.
(My left thumb still hurts, because I hit it that often. Now you know how old I am.)
The patent office take everything you pay for on paper. Nobody must prove that it works.
The internet has practical unlimited space.
The solution is today that easy. There is no judgment, no censorship any more. Everybody can upload any idea. (Probably with a fee.) And everybody can search this data containing all the knowledge of mankind in 100 or in 1000 years.
History shows there is no way to separate the “good” from the “bad” ideas. History is full of misjudgments by “experts”.  You would need God to tell you what is good and what is bad.
And another thing; for a scientists it is also a result if something not works. I would search for this if I am going to develop something, because I save time and money not to go in the wrong direction. A lot of nonsense in this database, what is not avoidable, will not hurt.
The internet is already full of pseudo science like Wikipedia. It will not hurt as long it is not presented as the absolute truce and scientists all banned to write there correcting mistakes as it is now the case. Such developments are very dangerously. Google is right showing everything without judgment. If Google would save the cache of every site forever it would be already something.

[graham.d]

The point I was making there was that, as you say, we have the ability to record every possible idea that people can have by many different means. The problem is how does anyone notice the really good idea or invention from the large amount of rubbish. For example, in electronics I would say that 99% of patent claims are invalid beacuse they are either prior art or someone reasonably versed in the art would devised the (obvious) solution being patented. Unfortunately the field is so vast now that patent lawyers are simply not up to the task of deciding such issues and there is huge pressure from large organisations to patent everything they can to have a sufficient weight of patents (valueless or not) to counter-sue any company making a claim on them which acts as a deterrent; the companies know that the big winners in ant patent war is usually just the lawyers.

Many "learned" papers are similarly worthless though at least more genuine in their attempts to be original. Success at a university is measured by the the number of papers it gets accepted by journals. There is strong incentives to publish and get a paper past peer reviews (and at least this has to happen for the better publications). The number of these that turn out to say something really new and important is unfortunately not large and it is also hard to find the good ones from the average to poor except to wait (often some years) to find a particular paper referenced a lot by other papers - a good sign.

You are right to imply that it is sometimes difficult to tell a good idea from a bad one but I have to say that if you have a situation where only 1 in 1000 is good (say) then I, for one, would like to see a good deal of pre-filtering. Life is too short. It would be wrong if there were no record of these adjudged "bad" ideas, but there does need to be a practical method of sifting. Sites that try to promote "alternative" science are packed with loonies building anti-gravity machines (for example)! I would love to believe that someone will produce one that works but, despite the high interest in such sites, none have emerged.

[Wolfhart Willimczik (OP)]

The point I was making there was that, snip.... the companies know that the big winners in ant patent war is usually just the lawyers.

Many "learned" papers are similarly worthless
You are right to imply that it is sometimes difficult to tell a good idea from a bad one but I have to say that if you have a situation where only 1 in 1000 is good (say) then I, for one, would like to see a good deal of pre-filtering. Life is too short.

I know all this - even more, but we should not despair.
It is now forbidden for me to get a patent in the German patent office. You don't know the influence of the secret service like SSD/Stasi/KGB which now infiltrated all levels of society like a big mafia.
Ergo there is nobody there to make the filtering, if 2 man with pistols standing behind him...
The secret is in the search engine. You exclude the words "anti-gravity"; "water car" etc...
And you see only the good one under the 1000 bad ones. This is the only way I see.
It did already happen that my name was erased from Wikipedia as somebody wrote something about one invention of mine. My name was even erased or ignored at patents and even in papers describing my invention, or put another name on. All done by secret man you never see.  We can not ignore this, because these man fight not against nonsense, but against the best ideas, which get lost in this secret filtering process. You see it everywhere; a very few bad man determine our way to go.
Google, youtube make it (still) right - filtering out no ideas. Everybody has to filter out by himself what he wants.

But this is only my experience...
If you find a better way I will listening.

Wikipedia was also a good idea to save knowledge - today it is the greatest instrument to suppress knowledge, because no admin is ask of his past by the SSD/Stasi. I know the old officers are that happy that they have now such powerful instrument in hand to tell the world what they want and to erase what they want. I can give you samples...

[Wolfhart Willimczik (OP)]

There are things like archive.org and the big libraries are doing it to some extent - I think the British Library just got some responsibilities in that direction.

Thank you for the tip.
I tested archive.org. I could not find scientific content, but there are books etc.
It is a start, but there is not yet a real search engine.

But I could find my erased stuff.
(There is an ongoing secret war; I put something on the internet - others erase it.)

I could find again what was erased against my will: (very interesting; I could have made my case in court with it):

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_del_Wolfhart [nofollow] 
my engine is still running in archive.org
http://web.archive.org/web/20080121031307/http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_del_Wolfhart [nofollow]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_vane_pump_principle_%28System_Willimczik%29 [nofollow]
another erased invention from me, but without pictures (this is only 1 sample of more)

http://www.mechanicalengineering.tv/InventorWillimczik [nofollow] 
but no videos

http://saturn.spaceports.com/~wolfhart/buch.htm [nofollow]
but not all pictures
http://web.archive.org/web/20090625133240/http://saturn.spaceports.com/~wolfhart/buch.htm [nofollow]

my destroyed website at hubs.com is there
http://web.archive.org/web/20050212131437/http://wolfhart.wwwhubs.com/ [nofollow]

[CliffordK]

There is some concern for future genealogists, archaeologists, and etc.  We have so much more information now that we ever had in the past.  But, one thing that is disappearing very quickly are the handwritten notes.  Now we may also stop developing photos.  And, of course, it is easy to simply delete or loose a hard drive.

[Bored chemist]

OK, first cite some evidence for the 1000 year assertion.
Next, perhaps you should look at the effects of war on scientific discovery.
The cold war gave us space technology.
WWII gave us radar miniaturised electronics, microwaves and a lot of other things too.
It's true that the Stasi destroyed scientific.
You might want to consider how well that worked out for them.

It is certainly my fault if everybody thinks in a direction diametral to that what I meant.
I forgot to say…except everything to kill each other. I know that wars gave as many things, what we can use in peace times. Others get lost. Getting lost means per definition we have no record of it. This are the things I mean, but you want that I show you in black and weiß.
It starts already here writing in English. I had the perfect translation program for Windows 3.5 – not any more, because it wont run in the new windows. It was developed by a physicist in Switzerland and called “witchpen”. Now there is no program coming even close. It depended all on one man! Most people don’t’ even know that there was even a program you could write some words in German, some words in English – just how you know it and the program made it right during writing! And it learned new words automatically without doing anything…You only write what you just know. Now I have to stop at every word O don’t know and look it up…weiß - .
There are 100 000 other cases of loss – just now under our eyes, which we can’t see.
Hundred years later it will be reinvented like the concrete, which the old Romans developed. Then there was no concrete or beton any more on earth. It had to be reinvented. There is no record of the knowledge. We only know it in this case, because the coliseum is still standing in Rom and everybody can touch it. How many other things are lost which are not that visible? Nobody know it. We can only say it is more than everybody can imagine.
Only the few things we do know shed a dim light on mankind’s saving of knowledge.
The old Greek had a good understanding of the elements, the earth and the solar system, but it was hard to put it all in stone.
The church had the monopoly for saving knowledge and their distribution. To make it comfortable for everybody knowledge was simplified - as today in Wikipedia - to a point that the earth was again a disc in the middle of everything.
It took over 1000 years that science could strive again. We lost over 1000 years on science.
And today it is worse. The Stasi destroyed everything not war important.
Of course the communists must go down with this method, (I helped) but what about the scientific findings of all the scientists behind the wall? I know personnel some deserving a Nobel price, but ending up in a madhouse etc. I by myself posted desperately my work from1966, because it was never published and will soon disappear together with me.
Many things, which will be considered very useful in 50 or 100 years, are ignored – on the end destroyed today.
Since nobody is able to decide what is worth to be saved and what not, we have to save safe every scientific finding somewhere and somehow. That’s what I am talking about, all the things which get never published. (How long will this forum be saved?)

Well, perhaps you would like to tell us how many people were killed by portable radios, microwave ovens, Satellite TVs etc.
Or were you talking bollocks when you said "I forgot to say…except everything to kill each other."?

if you really had a translation program that worked perfectly in some early version of windows, but not the later versions, that's a very simple problem to solve. Don't upgrade. Frankly, I don't think you had a good translator.

"The church had the monopoly for saving knowledge and their distribution. "
What a pity that the church chose to suppress knowledge (ask Galileo)

Anyway, there are lots of institutions whose job is to ensure that information is not forgotten. they get called schools and universities and libraries (not to mention the web) so your original question is deeply flawed.

It's like asking "why are there no pigeons"?
There are lots.

[Wolfhart Willimczik (OP)]

Well, perhaps you would like to tell us how many people were killed by portable radios, microwave ovens, Satellite TVs etc.
Or were you talking bollocks when you said "I forgot to say…except everything to kill each other."?

for you I correct myself again:… except everything with the sole purpose to kill each other.
Satisfied? (Like in court I have to watch for every word with you.)

if you really had a translation program that worked perfectly in some early version of windows, but not the later versions, that's a very simple problem to solve. Don't upgrade. Frankly, I don't think you had a good translator.

Yes I did it with one – even 2 laptops, but both disintegrated…(It was DOS 3.5 !)
But this was not the point. The point was even the best products get lost for mankind – even in this information age. There is no university, no library, no corporation – no humans which are committed to do something against this loss. Or can you tell me where it is available today? You could do a great service to everybody who needs English and German.

"The church had the monopoly for saving knowledge and their distribution. "
What a pity that the church chose to suppress knowledge (ask Galileo)

I “ask” also Giordano Bruno, who was burned on a stick by the power of the church, only because he said this what the Greeks already had known 1000 years earlier and what was suppressed by the church. Now – after more than 300 years – the church admitted its wrong doing and rehabilitated at least Galileo.
You know the church saved only one book – the bible.

Anyway, there are lots of institutions whose job is to ensure that information is not forgotten. they get called schools and universities and libraries (not to mention the web) so your original question is deeply flawed.

If you indeed are that naïv thinking “they” take care of it that nothing is forgotten I have to show you some samples I am sure of:
In 1966 in Pirna near Dresden a nuclear physicist made the first pictures from the trace of an alpha particle with a new spark chamber. This was a sensation in the scientific world.
Now show me please such a picture in any uni, library etc except here.

[Bored chemist]

If you know that the Greeks knew stuff before the Christian church got started then someone must have kept that knowledge (in some way) so it is not true that "The church had the monopoly for saving knowledge and their distribution. "

Did you not realise that?

Also, war-time developments gave us lots of things like microwaves and computers which are not designed to kill people.


When you say "Now show me please such a picture in any uni, library etc except here."
do you mean a copy of the same picture or do you mean early spark chamber pictures in general?
In any event, the point is moot.
Those pictures still exist.

[CliffordK]

No doubt many of our household items were vital for the military.

Portable Radios?  Satellites? 
Communication and surveillance is vital for the military.  And, of course the rockets that get the satellites into orbit came out of Germany's goals to find better ways to attack Great Britain.

There are good libraries and museums. 
You know, somewhere I have my old Apple IIe with a 300 baud modem & green or amber monitor.  If the floppies haven't degraded too much, it might even boot.  But you know, it is pretty obsolete.
 
Spell checking?  On the Apple, I could only load either the word processor or spell checker in memory.  So, to spell check a file, I'd save the file, exit out of the word processor, load the spell checker.  Check for spelling errors and mark them with a symbol like a "#" symbol.  Exit out of the spell checker and go back to the word processor and hunt for all the # symbols which I would then look the words up in a hard copy dictionary to find the ones I wanted. 

You know, I just don't miss that process that much.

WYSIWYG  Anybody still remember what that means? 
Back with the Apple, I learned numerous printer control commands so that I could tell the printer things like page size, width, page breaks, fonts, and etc using the printer control language.

Yes, there are some things that I regret having lost in life like the original soft-copy of my thesis.  But, many things have been passed up due to just becoming obsolete. 

Can you run DOS 3.x on a computer?  Perhaps?  It didn't really like anything more that 640 KB or RAM...  yes KB, not MB or GB.  And, also a 2 GB hard drive, I think.  If you find an old computer to run it on, it may be limited to a 10 GB hard drive in the BIOS.  You'll probably have a heck of a time getting things like USB thumb drives to work on it.  There are, of course DOS windows in all versions of Windows, but not with perfect compatibility.

But, I'd say at this point, it is time to just try something new.  There are many new translators including a few generally good online ones.

http://babblefish.com/language/free-language-translation/free-language-translators/
http://translate.google.com/

And, of course, there are also many commercial packages.

Not perfect, and I usually don't bother using the "teach" portion of Google, in part because I'm not great with the languages I have Google translate for me.

I've heard that one can bind translation into things like Yahoo Chat, but I haven't tried it.

[Wolfhart Willimczik (OP)]

If you know that the Greeks knew stuff before the Christian church got started then someone must have kept that knowledge (in some way) so it is not true that "The church had the monopoly for saving knowledge and their distribution. "

Did you not realise that?

Also, war-time developments gave us lots of things like microwaves and computers which are not designed to kill people.

When you say "Now show me please such a picture in any uni, library etc except here."
do you mean a copy of the same picture or do you mean early spark chamber pictures in general?
In any event, the point is moot.
Those pictures still exist.

The masses could not write, had no papyrus and not even a sturdy building to save something. Only monks could write and could save something in cloisters. Therefore they had a priory the monopoly.
Did you not realize that?
There where only very few others giving us only a glimpse what there probably was. What is all passed on by the peripatetikers ?
How much is  known from the Mayas. An entire civilization disappeared together with all the knowledge.
As already said in another post; as the troops from Rome burned the library in Alexandria almost the entire knowledge of an entire country was lost. (You should read also the other posts.)

I have to correct myself again: …except all things with the sole purpose to kill each other and things helping to kill each other.
Everybody know:  “War is the father of all things.” 
I tried to steer your attention to things which are not clear visible, which are not in magazines or newspapers or in TV, but I see I am still not successful. I don’t understand your resistance. Who or what are you defending? The war, the mishaps or what?
What are you thinking?
Do you think there is nothing out there, if you don’t see it in your newspaper?
Or do you think everything outside the mainstream is not worth to be saved? Please explain.


I mean any picture of a trace of a single low energy alpha particle.   
The few pictures here and in my website will disappear.                                                                                                                                             

Perhaps a better sample will help:
Since about 30 years exist a better pump for all kinds of refrigerators, but in every supermarket etc rattling still obsolete compressors.
You find no information in the mainstream that such a better pump even exist.
It is the only suitable pump which is able to pump fluid and gas simultaneously. And energy recovery would also be possible!

What do you want to do with this knowledge?