<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">I enjoy thinking about this but wonder if we should not worry about <div class="">saving everything for eternity. Perhaps that is something future</div><div class="">generations will work on - or perhaps it is the job of a civilization</div><div class="">to pass the information on the the next civilization, not to the next plus five.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">A couple of notes though:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">a) the radio was going on about the discovery of an ancient receipt for</div><div class="">copper and a complaint about the quality. Not terribly important.</div><div class="">Sturgeon’s Law applies and there is a time value to information.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">b) I recently priced a portable USB BD/DVD burner and found not only the</div><div class=""> same one I bought a few years back but found that it had also doubled in price. </div><div class="">It may be that my DVD’s will outlast the availability of anything that can read them. </div><div class="">Kind of like the recent queries in another forum for a technology to read old tape of </div><div class="">a particular format. The tape was “readable” but the sole (?) remaining </div><div class="">technology was in possession of a mystical wizard known but to few.</div><div class=""><br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Feb 25, 2019, at 11:14, Andrew G. Malis <<a href="mailto:agmalis@gmail.com" class="">agmalis@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div dir="ltr" class="">Jack,<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">In addition to the Internet Archive (already mentioned), you should also check out <a href="https://decentralizedweb.net/" class="">https://decentralizedweb.net</a> .</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Cheers,</div><div class="">Andy</div><div class=""><br class=""></div></div></div><br class=""><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Feb 24, 2019 at 9:58 PM Jack Haverty <<a href="mailto:jack@3kitty.org" class="">jack@3kitty.org</a>> wrote:<br class=""></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" class=""><p class="">True, but I think a first step is a persistent crowd-sourced
public store, which is what I described. Perhaps "restricted"
material could be simply stored encrypted, and thus visible in
search engines and accessible only to people with the appropriate
key, or maybe "permission" credentials. Volunteers might be
reluctant to participate if that became too common. <br class="">
</p><p class="">There's also other considerations, e.g., tracking the provenance
of an item, so you can tell whether or not something is authentic,
where it came from, when it was created, etc. Probably many more
such things to ponder. <br class="">
</p><p class="">IMHO those kinds of capabilities could be add-ons to a persistent
store as meta-data mechanisms, possibly many of them all
independent, associating their metadata with items in the
warehouse by some kind of unique ID - perhaps just a large-enough
hash of each of the contents. They could be added as someone
gets interested in doing so.<br class="">
</p><p class="">Anybody could build a metadata mechanism "on top of" the
persistent store. Some might be built by volunteers and free,
others by corporations and for sale. This is almost what the Web
is, except that the Web store isn't persistent - things on the Web
disappear without warning. Someone might put a web site "in
front of" the persistent store and use today's web tools pretty
much as is to access materials stored there.<br class="">
</p><p class="">/Jack<br class="">
</p>
<div class="gmail-m_-5474394948743262562moz-cite-prefix">On 2/24/19 4:07 PM, Vint Cerf wrote:<br class="">
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div dir="ltr" class="">not all data that we might want to preserve needs
to be publicly accessible.
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">v</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
</div>
<br class="">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Feb 24, 2019 at 6:23
PM Jack Haverty <<a href="mailto:jack@3kitty.org" target="_blank" class="">jack@3kitty.org</a>> wrote:<br class="">
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" class=""><p class="">I don't know much about SOLID, but it appears to be
addressing the problem of handling individuals' personal
private data, and controlling who can access it. What I
described was somewhat of the inverse - making data
public, survivable, and accessible to everyone. But maybe
there's overlap in any implementation. Certainly there
are lots of pieces already in place somewhere, as
evidenced by the success of viruses, pirated videos, and
the like.<br class="">
</p><p class="">The Internet has made possible new sorts of social
mechanisms. What I'm imagining is more like applying
Internet-style "crowd-funding" to the problem of a
historical archive, where people contribute cycles and
bytes rather than euros and dollars. <br class="">
</p><p class="">That wasn't possible pre-Internet, but it is now.
Thinking "outside the box" is a lot easier. The Internet
made the box much bigger....</p><p class="">/Jack<br class="">
</p><p class=""><br class="">
</p>
<div class="gmail-m_-5474394948743262562gmail-m_-5922535944441398686moz-cite-prefix">On
2/24/19 2:45 PM, Vint Cerf wrote:<br class="">
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div dir="ltr" class="">isn't that what SOLID is supposed to do?
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">v</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
</div>
<br class="">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Feb 24, 2019
at 1:47 PM Jack Haverty <<a href="mailto:jack@3kitty.org" target="_blank" class="">jack@3kitty.org</a>>
wrote:<br class="">
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">[Changed the
subject line]<br class="">
<br class="">
I read the recent messages on the forum just before
going to sleep, and<br class="">
then I had a dream....literally.<br class="">
<br class="">
There's a whole different perspective on Internet
History that might be<br class="">
very revealing. Instead of questions like "Who built
the Internet?",<br class="">
perhaps also ask "Who paid for the Internet?" If
historians "followed<br class="">
the money" like many other investigators, they might
find some<br class="">
interesting insights. I didn't realize until today
that the IETF is<br class="">
funded by ... Me! Through my payments for my .org
domain, maybe by now<br class="">
I've paid for an urn or two of coffee at an IETF
meeting.<br class="">
<br class="">
But my dream was of how to fund some kind of Internet
repository of<br class="">
historical materials, not subject to the management
whims or financial<br class="">
success of an "institution". My dream reminded me
that such mechanisms<br class="">
already exist, have been running at scale for years,
are self-funded,<br class="">
and seem essentially impossible to excise even when
governments or<br class="">
industry giants try to do so.<br class="">
<br class="">
My dream is of a Benevolent BotNet (apologies to my
alma mater, BBN). <br class="">
Instead of hosting and propagating malware and
viruses, or stealing<br class="">
computer cycle to mine cryptocurrency, the BBN would
simply store,<br class="">
replicate, and distribute historical materials on
demand. No doubt<br class="">
Richard's comment on Pirate Bay triggered this part of
the dream.<br class="">
<br class="">
Such technology obviously exists, and survives despite
serious efforts<br class="">
to eradicate it. Where the Internet was coopted for
evil, perhaps the<br class="">
evil could be coopted for good?<br class="">
<br class="">
Maybe even better would be a mechanism that didn't
rely on theft and<br class="">
subterfuge at all. Perhaps something akin to the SETI
mechanisms, where<br class="">
people voluntarily donate their computer resources to
analyze radio<br class="">
signals, by simply downloading a piece of code and
allowing it to run on<br class="">
their computers.<br class="">
<br class="">
So, my dream was that some new software appears, which
is freely<br class="">
downloaded by thousands or millions of people around
the world, which<br class="">
uses a few GB of the disk on their machines, and
stores historical<br class="">
material in a redundant, highly survivable,
persistent, distrubuted<br class="">
historical warehouse. One, or many, search engines
(go Google!, Bing!,<br class="">
DuckDuckGo!) would allow people to find material in
the warehouse. <br class="">
Anyone could contribute material to the historical
archive by simply<br class="">
placing a copy into the disk area of their machine
that they've shared,<br class="">
from where it would be automatically distributed and
replicated.<br class="">
<br class="">
Perhaps this is one or more apps that can be
downloaded. Or perhaps a<br class="">
plug in or extension to popular browsers. Or maybe an
addition to<br class="">
existing mechanisms like BitTorrent. Much of the code
already exists,<br class="">
as evidenced by the millions of computers unwittingly
participating in a<br class="">
Botnet, or willingly running code like SETI.<br class="">
<br class="">
Dave's offer of disk space is just the start. I
suspect many people<br class="">
would contribute some unused chunk of their computers
and network<br class="">
capacity. I have a few Terabytes on my NAS that are
empty...you<br class="">
probably do too. With enough participants, the BBN
becomes<br class="">
self-suficient even as people come and go.<br class="">
<br class="">
All it would seem to take is for someone to sit down
and write the<br class="">
code....in the classic Internet spirit of Rough
Consensus and Running Code.<br class="">
<br class="">
Dave....?<br class="">
<br class="">
/Jack Haverty<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
On 2/24/19 7:42 AM, Dave Taht wrote:<br class="">
> Joe Touch <<a href="mailto:touch@strayalpha.com" target="_blank" class="">touch@strayalpha.com</a>>
writes:<br class="">
><br class="">
>> On Feb 23, 2019, at 12:42 PM, Jack Haverty
<<a href="mailto:jack@3kitty.org" target="_blank" class="">jack@3kitty.org</a>>
wrote:<br class="">
>><br class="">
>> But "<a href="mailto:internet-history@postel.org" target="_blank" class="">internet-history@postel.org</a>",
and others like it, even RFC<br class="">
>> repositories, likely exist at the whim of
their sponsor. <br class="">
>><br class="">
>> Indeed - even assuming volunteers run them -
they’re’s still the issue<br class="">
>> of hosting and net access.<br class="">
>><br class="">
>> I have old repositories (end2end-interest,
for one) that even the ISOC<br class="">
>> has declined to host (even though the E2E-RG
originated there).<br class="">
>><br class="">
>> Then again, if you want to see the worst of
“free riders”, go attend<br class="">
>> an IETF. Companies send armies there for free
training and free<br class="">
>> consulting. <br class="">
>><br class="">
>> PS - speaking as list admin, if anyone wants
to offer a place to host<br class="">
>> this list more reliably and archivally,
please do let me know (contact<br class="">
>> me directly off-list).<br class="">
> My email list server currently lives on linode in
the cloud. The cost is<br class="">
> $5/month for 25GB of SSD storage. ( <a href="https://www.linode.com/pricing" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" class="">https://www.linode.com/pricing</a><br class="">
> ). Has IPv6 and IPv4. It's paid for via a patreon
donation.<br class="">
><br class="">
> It's not like I'm using much of that box - or the
bandwidth available -<br class="">
> how big are these archives?<br class="">
><br class="">
> I wouldn't mind sharing that existing list
server, but I long ago<br class="">
> switched to violating whatever RFC it was that
said starttls was a<br class="">
> "should" - to *mandate* starttls only - which
cuts down on spam (and<br class="">
> sigh, about 13% of my measured potential
correspondents, still). The<br class="">
> biggest administrative cost I'd had was dealing
with spam.<br class="">
><br class="">
> If that's not an acceptable policy for these
lists/archives, well, go<br class="">
> burn the 5 bucks/mo on yer own.<br class="">
><br class="">
><br class="">
>> Joe<br class="">
>><br class="">
>><br class="">
>> _______<br class="">
>> internet-history mailing list<br class="">
>> <a href="mailto:internet-history@postel.org" target="_blank" class="">internet-history@postel.org</a><br class="">
>> <a href="http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" class="">http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history</a><br class="">
>> Contact <a href="mailto:list-owner@postel.org" target="_blank" class="">list-owner@postel.org</a> for
assistance.<br class="">
_______<br class="">
internet-history mailing list<br class="">
<a href="mailto:internet-history@postel.org" target="_blank" class="">internet-history@postel.org</a><br class="">
<a href="http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" class="">http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history</a><br class="">
Contact <a href="mailto:list-owner@postel.org" target="_blank" class="">list-owner@postel.org</a>
for assistance.<br class="">
</blockquote>
</div>
<br clear="all" class="">
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
-- <br class="">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail-m_-5474394948743262562gmail-m_-5922535944441398686gmail_signature">
<div dir="ltr" class="">New postal address:
<div class="">Google<br class="">
<div class="">1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor</div>
<div class="">Reston, VA 20190</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br clear="all" class="">
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
-- <br class="">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail-m_-5474394948743262562gmail_signature">
<div dir="ltr" class="">New postal address:
<div class="">Google<br class="">
<div class="">1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor</div>
<div class="">Reston, VA 20190</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
_______<br class="">
internet-history mailing list<br class="">
<a href="mailto:internet-history@postel.org" target="_blank" class="">internet-history@postel.org</a><br class="">
<a href="http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" class="">http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history</a><br class="">
Contact <a href="mailto:list-owner@postel.org" target="_blank" class="">list-owner@postel.org</a> for assistance.<br class="">
</blockquote></div>
_______<br class="">internet-history mailing list<br class=""><a href="mailto:internet-history@postel.org" class="">internet-history@postel.org</a><br class="">http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history<br class="">Contact list-owner@postel.org for assistance.<br class=""></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></div></body></html>