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Ask HN: How to make my website exist for 100 years?

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Re: Ask HN: How to make my website exist for 100 years?

#61

20 years - google doc with backups in your email and wherever your taxes and medical stuff is, and printed copy with your home records 40 years - print and bind the google doc in 20 years, store it with their stuff when they leave the house. 60 years - publish the book buy a bunch of copies and distribute 100 years - it needs to be a very good book

real answer - have generational wealth, attach the documents to your trust. This should last either until your nation’s currency collapses or the trust value does.

Trust documents are usually held privately, and not publicly recorded (as their entire point is to shield this estate planning and asset holding from the public). If you put it in someone's will, upon their death the will would be recorded and it would persist as long as the jurisdiction does maintaining the will on file.

Re: Ask HN: How to make my website exist for 100 years?

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is of course assuming that Internet Archive will still exist in 100 years.

And that Internet will still exist in 100 years

The Internet Archive would not require the Internet to continue to store digital data, nor to ingest additional digital data. As long as the bills get paid and people watch the machine, the data would remain on disk and accessible.

The Library of Congress has existed for ~225 years, for example.

Re: Ask HN: How to make my website exist for 100 years?

#63
post #53
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What knowledge do you have that was passed down 3 or more generations to you?

Spoken language, reading, writing, arithmetic, farming, tool use, law, mechanics, tracking, sewing, leatherwork, casting, weaving, forrestry, swimming, diving, shooting, general warfare, riding, dishwashing ... Almost , but not, aviation. There's probably more. That's my family though - we're still using 1935 CWA cookbooks and occasionally pull a plough with horses or bullocks. We've obviously added and upgraded thos…

I'm not sure if OP's blog posts are likely to have the same level of utility to future generations as something like, say, spoken language :)

Re: Ask HN: How to make my website exist for 100 years?

#64
First of all, nothing that any of us have to say today will have any value in 100 years. (And probably a lot less than that.)

Putting that inconvenient fact aside, there’s virtually no chance that a “website” you build today will work in 100 years, so you can’t think in terms of the digital representations we use now. The future might as well be populated by aliens. Instead think in terms of self-renewing systemic processes and incentives:

Create a trust that upon your death periodically (every 5 years?) doles out a pot of money to your descendant(s) who ensure that your writings are published on whatever form of Internet/“Web” exists at the time. Hire a law firm to enforce the terms and hunt down your descendant(s) at the appropriate times for a cut of the money. In theory, this could continue forever as long as the money grows and the amount remains incentivizing.

The other option since that will be expensive is to attach your writings to genealogical records on Ancestry, or register them with the Mormon church (who are major genealogical record keepers). There are many people who diligently steward those records down the years, and there is a fair chance that they will be rediscovered by someone in your line of succession. Having a lot of kids will help the cause—and your picaresque adventures in doing so would give you something to write about that people might actually want to read about in 100 years.

Or, you know, just print a book and give it to your kids as a family heirloom.

Re: Ask HN: How to make my website exist for 100 years?

#65
post #53
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What knowledge do you have that was passed down 3 or more generations to you?

Spoken language, reading, writing, arithmetic, farming, tool use, law, mechanics, tracking, sewing, leatherwork, casting, weaving, forrestry, swimming, diving, shooting, general warfare, riding, dishwashing ... Almost , but not, aviation. There's probably more. That's my family though - we're still using 1935 CWA cookbooks and occasionally pull a plough with horses or bullocks. We've obviously added and upgraded thos…

I was obviously talking about 3 generations from your own known family, which is the only interpretation given the topic being discussed. How can people miss the point of a question so completely? I am actually interested in understanding what goes on in your mind to talk about "spoken language" in the context of someone asking how to make a website last a few generations.

Re: Ask HN: How to make my website exist for 100 years?

#66
post #65
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken language, reading, writing, arithmetic, farming, tool use, law, mechanics, tracking, sewing, leatherwork, casting, weaving, forrestry, swimming, diving, shooting, general warfare, riding, dishwashing ... Almost , but not, aviation. There's probably more. That's my family though - we're still using 1935 CWA cookbooks and occasionally pull a plough with horses or bullocks. We've obviously added and upgraded thos…

I was obviously talking about 3 generations from your own known family, which is the only interpretation given the topic being discussed. How can people miss the point of a question so completely? I am actually interested in understanding what goes on in your mind to talk about "spoken language" in the context of someone asking how to make a website last a few generations.

You directly asked

> What knowledge do you have that was passed down 3 or more generations to you?

and I answered, incompletely, with a list of knowledge and skills I directly learned within my own family, things that have been passed on within various branches of that family over generations.

I was raised by a large extended family, my grandson had, as a baby, a blanket crocheted by my grandmother for my son, the same grandmother who taught me how to darn, sew, weave, etc. just as she taught my father who used those skills in the navy to maintain his kit.

I learnt english and other languages from the generation before me .. and the generation before them as they were not dead when I was a child - and I had living great grandparents.

Do you not count knowledge of language as something passed on by prior generations?

Many of these people left journals or memoirs .. and number have portions of their lives collected in national archives (

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Beersheba_(1917)

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rats_of_Tobruk

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallipoli_campaign

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Australia

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War (1853)

Also part of my larger extended family are (still alive) and were (now passed) people that passed down stories and looked after and maintained rock art (both painted and carved) that has survived several tens of thousands of years.

Almost all the geophysical data I gathered is archived, along with data gathered before me, in walk in fireproof safes on tapes, as ascii, on acid free paper, etc.

In short, what goes through my mind is my direct experience with the transmission of and preservation of knowledge.

How about yourself?

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