◊(Local Yarn Code "Check-in [078a4e03]")

#lang pollen

◊; Copyright 2020 by Joel Dueck. All Rights Reserved.
◊; Copyright 2015 by Joel Dueck. All Rights Reserved.

◊(define-meta published "2020-03-08")
◊(define-meta published "2015-03-24")

◊title{Future Proofing}

Thing that’s been on my mind lately: if you want your blog posts or your photographs to be around
fifty years from now, you need to print them out. And the best format for that printout is a bound
book. And if you care about your stuff being around ◊em{after you die}, you’ll print lots of copies
and distribute them to anyone who might be persuaded to take one of them.

Prize-nominated feature in one of the nation’s oldest newspapers can disappear from the web,
anything can. “There are now no passive means of preserving digital information,” said Abby Rumsey,
a writer and digital historian. In other words if you want to save something online, you have to
decide to save it. Ephemerality is built into the very architecture of the web, which was intended
to be a messaging system, not a library.

◊footer{Adrienne LaFrance, ◊link['rtw]{Raiders of the Lost Web}}

◊url['rtw]{http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/10/raiders-of-the-lost-web/409210/}
}

I can envision only one sort-of-practical way the web can be “preserved” in any meaningful sense of
the word: a giant microfiche archive with a card index. Yes, it would be inconvenient to use. It’s
also the only option likely to be useable at all in 100 years.

}