Speaker Biography

Laura Welcher

Director of Operations

The Long Now Foundation

Laura Welcher, Ph.D. has a background in linguistics and language documentation and revitalization. For the past 15 years, she has worked at The Long Now Foundation building a collection of parallel information on the world’s languages and exploring strategies for very long-term archiving. One of these is The Rosetta Disk, a back-up of the collection with language data microscopically written into a thin piece of nickel. With reasonable care, the Rosetta Disk can last and be readable for thousands of years. She is also on the board of METI International, where she is exploring very long-term communication and exolinguistics.