The Long Now foundation has a write-up on my recently-lost long bet:
On February 22, 02011, Jeremy Keith made a prediction that he hoped would be proven wrong.
The story of Long Bets, specifically that one.
Given the nature of the long bet I’ve got running, I’m surprised that the Long Now Foundation are publishing on Medium. Wanna bet how long this particular URL will last?
This is like the Gashlycrumb Tinies but for websites:
It’s been interesting to see how websites die — from domain parking pages to timeouts to blank pages to outdated TLS cipher errors, there are a multitude of different ways.
I feel there is something beyond the technological that is the real trick to a site that lasts: you need to have some stake in the game. You don’t let your URLs die because you don’t want them to. They matter to you. You’ll tend to them if you have to. They benefit you in some way, so you’re incentivized to keep them around. That’s what makes a page last.
I know many people love Medium’s editing interface, but I just can’t believe that so many writers and publications have turned toward a single centralized commercial entity as a proposed solution to what ails the publishing industry. There is tremendous strength in independence and decentralization.
This sixteen year old cool URI has not changed. I think this idea of domains entering an archive state is worth pursuing.
Also, I love the science fictional footnote “Note for readers after 2100”.
HTML for digital preservation.
Generating a static copy of The Session from the comfort of European trains.
2022 was once unimaginable to some web folks.
The most pernicious of falsehoods is the idea that the internet never forgets.
Preserving the habitual, the banal.