At the moment, there are still lots of stuff in use that no one really knows how to maintain. Most of the original developers might be still alive, but in a few decades we might have a few systems where no one locally available can even read the programming language they are implemented on. Most important systems get backed up with up-to-date and modern system that are attached to the old hardware with nine inch nails and bubblegum, but there's lots of stuff that will become unreadable once the original equipment braks down, as no spare parts or replacements are manufactured any more.
Though technically, you could read magnetic media with suitable miniatyrized equipment, but would still need to know the encoding of the data, as all old data is without exception encoded in binary, possibly with no standard with contemporary equipment. In addition to this, the data may be compressed with an unknown algorith, obfuscating simple dictionary attacks against replacement ciphers. Modern cryptanalysis can still open these in tolerable time frames, but doing that to a huge amount of data will take some time and resources, specially if the data must be re-encoded to modern formats by manually reading the bits.
This problem is already reality with lots of data. This is partially why there's a growing support of "human readable" data formats - i.e. formats that do not compress the data, and display in the contents in a way that once the very basic encoding (character set) is known, the contents of the file can be read. (For example, the new Word format is a ZIP package with the plaintext, so to read it you only need to know how to unzip the file and then the Windows charset.) I am however rather pessimistic on humanity learning anything from past mistakes. The most efficient modern method of saving data is microfilms, which will preserve for perhaps a few hundred years. CDs in the best case last decades. There is no data on how long DVDs or blue ray discs last, and once we start applying nanotech in storing data, stuff like oxygen breaking in the device and oxidizing it start to have a role. The storage medium and equipment must be maintained and the data continually refreshed in new formats if we want to be able to read it in the future. Assuming the fall of civilization, anything that isn't written on stone tablets inside a durable shelter (such as a pyramid) cannot be trusted. Terran tech might have been preserved with yet unknown very hard and durable materials, though, so in a sci-fi setting we might be able to give the benefit of doubt.
The actual problem is that unless the word is somehow essential, the language itself will be changed. Read the earliest Bible translation available to your language (in the case of English, this means ninth century). Assuming that isn't incredible recent, I bet you don't use the same vocabulary. And the difference in time is only hundreds of years. For the setting of EVE, we are talking about thousands of years. The closest equivalent would be trying to read cuneiform, but the difference is roughly four times more than the time difference from the earliest cuneiform to the current real-life date.
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Topic: Soldier Characters - Phonetic Alphabet (Read 4186 times)