GitHub Lets AI Artist Redesign Arctic Code Vault

GitHub has had a new vault designed for the Arctic Code Vault. Artist Alex Maki-Jokela designed the 1,400-pound vault, which contains code repositories that should last for a thousand years.

With the design of the safe says GitHub that it has entered phase 1.0. GitHub took a snapshot of all repos currently hosted on the platform on February 2, 2020. That’s part of the Archive Program. The snapshot is kept in a vault in an old mine in Spitsbergen, above the Arctic Circle. This mine also contains the Global Seed Vault, a collection of all the seeds that can be found on earth. The idea of ​​the mine is that seeds, software or other information can be stored there for hundreds or even thousands of years for future generations. In addition to all repos, the GitHub Archive Program has also written extensive documentation on how to read the software. It is also there the Tech Tree, a sort of encyclopedia about how software will be used in 2020. The Tech Tree explains programming languages, as well as algorithms, compilers, and hardware architectures.

When GitHub kept the code in the vault in 2020, it was still there in a normal shipping container. That container has now been replaced by a specially designed safe that looks more like a work of art. The new design was created by Alex Maki Jokela, an artist who uses technology and artificial intelligence for his designs. The new GitHub vault is also AI-generated and resembles the design of a printed circuit board. On the inside of the door is a quote from GitHub boss Nat Friedman: “Open Source has won”.

GitHub says it has discussed the design with the Long Now Foundation, a foundation that has been trying to preserve cultural heritage for a long time. “If you don’t make it beautiful, it is doomed to fail,” says director Alexander Rose of the foundation. “Even if our descendants don’t know what it is centuries from now, at least they certainly recognize it as something unique,” ​​GitHub writes.