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I was quite moved to read the account of how the papers of the diseased Jewish Philosopher Husserl where saved for posterity. This quote struck me hard: > This

I was quite moved to read the account of how the papers of the diseased Jewish Philosopher Husserl where saved for posterity. This quote struck me hard: > This reveals one of the essential characteristics of an archive. To be an archive, the material must be public – there is no such thing as a private archive. It is located in space, a space outside the person whom it historicises. In this way, an archive is always threatened with destruction, and with it the person or time commemorated. Totalitarian governments of all stripes have recognised this – for all the defiance of the Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov’s phrase ‘manuscripts don’t burn’ – they do, and with them are immolated lives, ways of being, and cultures. We must continue to build out systems like #nostr and #bittorrent -like hosting to ensure that any culture will survive the next wave of Left or Right politics that will no doubt require its own wave of (digital) book burnings

robertlagrant 2y ago
As a non-crypto person, this is the sort of use I could imagine IPFS being put to. Slow, distributed storage of websites like archive.org.
- ktallett 2y ago
  It is perfect for things like that. Z-Lib was stored onto IPFS. Although of course the issue isn't actually creating the repository of information, it is fighting against those who wish to shut any repository down.
- refset 2y ago
  Arweave has a compelling design for long-term public archival along these lines, with an explicit concept of 'endowment' to predictably cover the costs of future storage.
  - immibis 2y ago
    The Arweave endowment is just one of these crazy schemes crypto folks think up to make their systems harder to understand so you don't realize how they scam you. I'm not saying Arweave is a scam, but that's exactly what this endowment structure is. They may as well just mint extra tokens to pay whoever the endowment pays, and delete tokens that would have gone into the endowment. BTW, Arweave doesn't guarantee permanent archival - nodes are free to decide what to archive.
    - refset 2y ago
      I haven't followed Arweave closely at all recently but the creator seemed genuine and capable enough to warrant attention. As to tech itself, assuming commodity storage costs continue to drop ~indefinitely and somewhat predictably it feels intuitive to me how such a scheme can be viable. It's ultimately a bet on ever-reducing storage costs.
chrisweekly 2y ago
diseased? (sick / infected) did you mean deceased? (dead)
x-complexity 2y ago
> We must continue to build out systems like #nostr and #bittorrent -like hosting to ensure that any culture will survive the next wave of Left or Right politics that will no doubt require its own wave of (digital) book burnings I can't agree any harder than I do right now. The idea that any form of data in any medium should be destroyed/hidden is horrifying, regardless of the reason(s) that led to such decisions.

robertlagrant 2y ago

As a non-crypto person, this is the sort of use I could imagine IPFS being put to. Slow, distributed storage of websites like archive.org.

ktallett 2y ago
It is perfect for things like that. Z-Lib was stored onto IPFS. Although of course the issue isn't actually creating the repository of information, it is fighting against those who wish to shut any repository down.
refset 2y ago
Arweave has a compelling design for long-term public archival along these lines, with an explicit concept of 'endowment' to predictably cover the costs of future storage.
- immibis 2y ago
  The Arweave endowment is just one of these crazy schemes crypto folks think up to make their systems harder to understand so you don't realize how they scam you. I'm not saying Arweave is a scam, but that's exactly what this endowment structure is. They may as well just mint extra tokens to pay whoever the endowment pays, and delete tokens that would have gone into the endowment. BTW, Arweave doesn't guarantee permanent archival - nodes are free to decide what to archive.
  - refset 2y ago
    I haven't followed Arweave closely at all recently but the creator seemed genuine and capable enough to warrant attention. As to tech itself, assuming commodity storage costs continue to drop ~indefinitely and somewhat predictably it feels intuitive to me how such a scheme can be viable. It's ultimately a bet on ever-reducing storage costs.

chrisweekly 2y ago

diseased? (sick / infected) did you mean deceased? (dead)

x-complexity 2y ago

> We must continue to build out systems like #nostr and #bittorrent -like hosting to ensure that any culture will survive the next wave of Left or Right politics that will no doubt require its own wave of (digital) book burnings I can't agree any harder than I do right now. The idea that any form of data in any medium should be destroyed/hidden is horrifying, regardless of the reason(s) that led to such decisions.