Nanotechnology could potentially lead to a "self extracting molecular
archive machine". The archive would store a set of documents in a very
small space using molecular structures. There would be a visible button
that would cause the archive to build out a full size visual structure
containing a human readable set of documents.
If such a self extracting molecular archive machine were to be built it
would potentially solve problems of what sort of technology would be
available in 5,000 years. There would be a simple set of instructions
which describe a kind of material soup that would have to be available to
the machine to build the visible documents. There would have to be
some protection against false misfires.
If 500 year storage issues are solved, would there be a chance for
some future technology to provide a 5000 year solution? While this
technology is currently science fiction, it would be good to talk about
whether this or other future technologies might solve the longer term
problems.