> - 115 analog images encoded in the record’s grooves: how to build the stylus and play the record
To learn to play the record you've gotta play the record?
That thing is such a D/K pop-sci manifestation.
The writers of the Star Trek movie understood that Sagan's extra-solar artifact is merely a time capsule; humanity talking to its future self.
Some great grandchild of a millennial vinyl nerd, who lives and loves on the engineering deck of some Hyatt Regency in space, will have kept a perfectly maintained Technics, handed down across the generations, leading to a future crowd in ""Ten Forward"" being regaled by Sagan's Cosmos on a similarly well-maintained Magnavox 32-inch tube TV and VHS. "Billions of fucks were given for V'Ger to come back to us..." The meetup will be hosted by a curiously bald supermodel, a hunky but demure mensch, and an AI Carl Sagan.
The instructions aren't encoded in the grooves, that makes no sense. Rather the schematics are etched on the back sides of the records, and with those you can build the stylus and decode the images.