3 ms·

Prepaying 100 years to secure your digital legacy hinges on the sad premise that no one else will bother to keep it going. Like a swan song that lasts way too

Prepaying 100 years to secure your digital legacy hinges on the sad premise that no one else will bother to keep it going. Like a swan song that lasts way too long through sheer financial will.

jacquesm 3y ago
This is one of the major differences between digital and paper: digital requires constant upkeep. If you'd replace the inscriptions on pyrymids and obelisks as well as the various old documents with their digital equivalent we'd have lost them long ago. And they will still be there long after their current digital equivalents have turned to dust. The only defense that digital has is boundless copies, in the hope that some of them survive. But the chances of any particular copy surviving very long is nil and even if it does it is probably going to be unreadable so you need to keep copying.
- miragecraft 3y ago
  We have the Internet Archive though, so you’re really just paying for search engine discoverability and… domain name squatting as a dead person. I’d bet that the Internet Archive will last longer than Wordpress as an organization.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    There are a lot of forces that would love to see the IA disappear. I wouldn't bet on them any more than I would on any other copy. If you really think something is worth preserving print it out on acid free paper or archival quality microfiche.
    - miragecraft 3y ago
      Those forces are not against the website preservation part of IA, only their “digital library” part where they provide access to copyrighted material for free. I seriously doubt even if IA lost a bunch of lawsuits would your archived website be in any danger, as there are many many interested parties (including nation states) who are keen to keep the archived websites from disappearing as they are an important public resource.

3 ms·

Prepaying 100 years to secure your digital legacy hinges on the sad premise that no one else will bother to keep it going. Like a swan song that lasts way too

by miragecraft 3y ago

Prepaying 100 years to secure your digital legacy hinges on the sad premise that no one else will bother to keep it going. Like a swan song that lasts way too long through sheer financial will.

jacquesm 3y ago
This is one of the major differences between digital and paper: digital requires constant upkeep. If you'd replace the inscriptions on pyrymids and obelisks as well as the various old documents with their digital equivalent we'd have lost them long ago. And they will still be there long after their current digital equivalents have turned to dust. The only defense that digital has is boundless copies, in the hope that some of them survive. But the chances of any particular copy surviving very long is nil and even if it does it is probably going to be unreadable so you need to keep copying.
- miragecraft 3y ago
  We have the Internet Archive though, so you’re really just paying for search engine discoverability and… domain name squatting as a dead person. I’d bet that the Internet Archive will last longer than Wordpress as an organization.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    There are a lot of forces that would love to see the IA disappear. I wouldn't bet on them any more than I would on any other copy. If you really think something is worth preserving print it out on acid free paper or archival quality microfiche.
    - miragecraft 3y ago
      Those forces are not against the website preservation part of IA, only their “digital library” part where they provide access to copyrighted material for free. I seriously doubt even if IA lost a bunch of lawsuits would your archived website be in any danger, as there are many many interested parties (including nation states) who are keen to keep the archived websites from disappearing as they are an important public resource.