We tell each other to self host in order to escape the big corps. But when we die, all the self hosted stuff is going to get wiped and history will only remember the archives that got stored by the big corps. And you know how history is written by the winners. Do we need a way to automatically hand over our sites to archive.org or similar? Or send them disc images? Nobody expects to get run over by a car but some of us will, today. I made no plans for this.
@kensanata There's decentralized systems like IPFS, BitTorrent, Zeronet et al. make replication of content easy, as in when you visit content you also help host it. No solution is 100% permanent, look at historical examples. But the more something is replicated the better it has a chance of standing the test of time; Epic of Gilgamesh, Shakespeare, Sanskrit scriptures and so on.
If you want your content to last, release it under a free license, back it up using free formats, or write it down.
@siraben I was thinking about my blog, and source code, and fediverse instances. Free license check. Private backup check. Write it down?! No way. And history is precisely the example I’m thinking off but I want us to do better. But I guess we’re not.
@kensanata Haha, the "write it down" was tongue-in-cheek. The issue with archiving things is that we sometimes archive the wrong things (see time capsules). In digital information you get a lot of storage in a very volatile format. Will your hard drive last a hundred years? Mine won't. The problem is getting worse with higher storage densities.
One active area of research is using crystals to store data, but how funny would it be if our crash reports are more useful to future historians!
@siraben @kensanata
Yes, Norsam Disks and such microscopic laser data storage are a great option, especially when data is stored in human-readable pages.
They still cost an arm and a leg, though. Unless there is a big push to make the tech popular and accessible, we may be living in a dark age of future history.
