There is a non-technology solution. Start a religion and declare your blog a sacred text. As long as you have followers, the text will be kept safe and translated into whatever communication mediums or languages are available in the future. Of course, making sure the religion sticks around is a bit of a "rest of the owl" exercise.
Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
791–800 of 825 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#792Earlier quoted context omitted.
At that rate, just make sure it's part of the human genome :)
Short story where SETI programmers turn new message hunting code on archived files and it detects a message in the human genome rather than in radio signals from the cosmos: https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/sftriple/gpic.html ( https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/252832/short-story... )
I really wish someone would make a good sci-fi movie around stories like this. No space lasers or wormholes, just high concept stories
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#793Assuming the human race will actually survive the next 500 years...
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#794The world wide web is only 28 years old. We've had computers for 76 years at this point. We're discussing this topic in modern English, but if you look back 500 years William Shakespeare wouldn't be born for another couple of generations: vocabulary and grammar have changed a lot since then, and if you look back a further 500 years (to 1021AD) the "English" spoken in those days was a lot closer to Frisian than anythi…
Maybe a better question is, what would HTML have looked like in the time of Shakespeare? Forsooth!
:)
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#795Your best best is github.io hosted website and archive.org for content.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#796Other comments have given ways to physically archive the webpage. Continually hosting it is a much trickier endeavor. Beyond just keeping the servers up, technologies will shift such that eventually html webpages, servers that talk using tcp/ip, datacenters that connect via fiber cables, etc will all be deprecated. That said, if we have a very liberal definition of the word "website" to include any successor technolo…
As institutions go, and depending on the nature of the content, I suggest considering saving it in https://FamilySearch.org , if it fits properly in a "stories" or "photos" or such concept that can be related clearly to family history.
It is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is almost 200 years old as an organization, which plans to last for a very long time; financially conservative (strong savings and effectively no debt), tech savvy, have strong traditions of decisions by consensus (or unanimity of leaders), and owns among other things a climate-controlled vault inside a granite mountain that has contained large amounts of microfilmed genealogical records (now digitized -- yay!). As family-oriented (ie, for preserving multigenerational culture among other things) as they come. One goal is to learn Adam's/everyone's family tree, as far as possible, and keep it forever. There are of ~ 17 million members (I am one), and for many reasons it seems likely to stick around a long time (I gather that Tolstoy also thought so, when he visited, when it was much smaller :) . (They also own Brigham Young University aka BYU, and holds a twice-yearly conference whose contents are translated to like >90 languages, I think several dozen languages live during it, and heard or read by people in some 220 countries, if my rough memory serves.)
I guess the site could have some size limit on what can be added from one person's account, or attached to one particular ancestor, or something, but the web site with all features is free, and I don't know why that would ever change. I used to work there (among many) on some back-end stuff.
(Edits to the above for clarity, working there, and the Tolstoy & BYU mentions.)
Edit: I'm curious: what is the general nature of the content you would like to save for 500 years? Sounds intriguing. Would it be useful to others also? Another idea would be to put it in wikipedia and/or archive.org, if it really doesn't fit in familysearch.org .
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#797There is a non-technology solution. Start a religion and declare your blog a sacred text. As long as you have followers, the text will be kept safe and translated into whatever communication mediums or languages are available in the future. Of course, making sure the religion sticks around is a bit of a "rest of the owl" exercise.
Or put yours in the data that a viable (old and growing) religion plans to preserve. :) See my more detailed comment elsewhere in the discussion.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#798Print it out on acid-free paper with a stable, acid-free ink. Have it bound as a hardback, and seal it into a waterproof container. Entrust it to one of your children, tell them to keep it in a safe-deposit box and take it out once a year to share with their children, and to pass it on to their children with the same instructions. If you have it electronically, the absolute best case in 500 years is that it will be a…
The weak link is the children - would you take out and read your great-grandfather's book every year ? Now take it further yet and eventually it gets boring and not done anymore.
It's really interesting how Jewish culture has done something like that for thousands (I'm not an expert), with the annual passover family conversation.
Edit: and/or other traditional Jewish yearly family events.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#799My bet is that you only chance is making it a family history site. And by that I mean that each generation of your future family must contribute their story and at the same time update the site to a modern solution. The base layer could be text files and image, even though jpeg might not exists in 200 year some other format does. But you must leave it up to you grandchildren to update the solution to modern formats.…
Or use a free family history site (https://familysearch.org ) maintained by a church/religion with a track record, size/growth, and that has realistic expectation to be around for the long haul. Details in my longer comment in this discussion. :)
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#800Earlier quoted context omitted.
Short story where SETI programmers turn new message hunting code on archived files and it detects a message in the human genome rather than in radio signals from the cosmos: https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/sftriple/gpic.html ( https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/252832/short-story... )
I really wish someone would make a good sci-fi movie around stories like this. No space lasers or wormholes, just high concept stories
Never, even in video games they always have to throw a fantasy element in :/