[ih] Internet History Lives on the Internet?

[Jack Haverty]

I think it's the nature of volunteerism that benefits flow in all sorts
of directions.  Whether people volunteer their time, or employers
volunteer their employees' time, the benefits aren't restricted to the
volunteers.  But they do it anyway, "for the cause", whatever that might
be.   I was a Red Cross volunteer for many years, spent lots of time
trudging through rainstorms to reach fire victims (the proper Red Cross
term is "client"), and all of the benefits went to them.  It just felt
good, and that was enough payback.

That's what I find intriguing about my Benevolent BotNet notion.  Rather
than depending on finding an institution interested in, competent at,
and willing to save history, and hoping that it has longevity, you rely
on a network of volunteers to provide that survivable infrastructure by
volunteering their excess computing resources.    After reaching a big
enough population, it could survive wildfires, earthquakes, floods, or
even collapse of government - as long as the Internet continues to
work.  Of course if all, or almost all, of the volunteers lose interest
in history, the system dies.  But if there's ever that few people
interested in something, it probably deserves to die.

There's decades of history of the needed technology already.  The first
prototype I can recall was the Altos at Xerox PARC back in the 80s.  I
remember John Schoch describing the maintenance program they had created
which self-replicated to any Alto it could find to keep itself alive and
running diagnostics.   The only way to kill it was to power down all the
machines -- probably not possible on the Internet today, so such a
mechanism would survive today as long as there was enough interest in
it.    Botnets, crypto-miners, blockchains, BitTorrents -- seems like a
lot of pieces already exist.

The Internet enabled social networking, crowdfunding, and other such
innovations that have supplanted traditional mechanisms by empowering
volunteers to act in consort.  Sometimes good, sometimes bad.  Why not
preserving history?

An institution on the Internet doesn't have to host an archive and
struggle to survive.   The Internet can become The Archive.

/Jack

On 2/24/19 11:33 AM, Joe Touch wrote:
>
>> On Feb 24, 2019, at 10:39 AM, Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org> wrote:
>>
>> I didn't realize until today that the IETF is
>> funded by ... Me!
> You don’t pay for the people who attend or those who work online throughout the year on lists, area directorates, etc. or advise IANA. 
>
> Those disproportionate financially benefit those who reap the revenues, IMO. The $1 tax on .orgs was a great start, but there ought to be quite different registration fees for for-profits. And other taxes to fund the support services that currently are a silent tax on us all. 
>
> Joe