[ih] Internet History Lives on the Internet?

Wed Feb 27 05:29:01 PST 2019

CDs and DVDs are not everlasting : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot

On Tue, Feb 26, 2019 at 5:47 PM John Lowry <jhlowry at mac.com> wrote:

> I enjoy thinking about this but wonder if we should not worry about
> saving everything for eternity.  Perhaps that is something future
> generations will work on - or perhaps it is the job of a civilization
> to pass the information on the the next civilization, not to the next plus
> five.
>
> A couple of notes though:
>
> a) the radio was going on about the discovery of an ancient receipt for
> copper and a complaint about the quality.  Not terribly important.
> Sturgeon’s Law applies and there is a time value to information.
>
> b) I recently priced a portable  USB BD/DVD burner and found not only the
>  same one I bought a few years back but found that it had also doubled in
> price.
> It may be that my DVD’s will outlast the availability of anything that can
> read them.
> Kind of like the recent queries in another forum for a technology to read
> old tape of
> a particular format.   The tape was “readable” but the sole (?) remaining
> technology was in possession of a mystical wizard known but to few.
>
>
> On Feb 25, 2019, at 11:14, Andrew G. Malis <agmalis at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Jack,
>
> In addition to the Internet Archive (already mentioned), you should also
> check out https://decentralizedweb.net .
>
> Cheers,
> Andy
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 24, 2019 at 9:58 PM Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org> wrote:
>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> /Jack
>> On 2/24/19 4:07 PM, Vint Cerf wrote:
>>
>> not all data that we might want to preserve needs to be publicly
>> accessible.
>>
>> v
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 24, 2019 at 6:23 PM Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org> wrote:
>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> 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....
>>>
>>> /Jack
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2/24/19 2:45 PM, Vint Cerf wrote:
>>>
>>> isn't that what SOLID is supposed to do?
>>>
>>> v
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Feb 24, 2019 at 1:47 PM Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> [Changed the subject line]
>>>>
>>>> I read the recent messages on the forum just before going to sleep, and
>>>> then I had a dream....literally.
>>>>
>>>> There's a whole different perspective on Internet History that might be
>>>> very revealing.  Instead of questions like "Who built the Internet?",
>>>> perhaps also ask "Who paid for the Internet?"  If historians "followed
>>>> the money" like many other investigators, they might find some
>>>> interesting insights.  I didn't realize until today that the IETF is
>>>> funded by ... Me!   Through my payments for my .org domain, maybe by now
>>>> I've paid for an urn or two of coffee at an IETF meeting.
>>>>
>>>> But my dream was of how to fund some kind of Internet repository of
>>>> historical materials, not subject to the management whims or financial
>>>> success of an "institution".   My dream reminded me that such mechanisms
>>>> already exist, have been running at scale for years, are self-funded,
>>>> and seem essentially impossible to excise even when governments or
>>>> industry giants try to do so.
>>>>
>>>> My dream is of a Benevolent BotNet (apologies to my alma mater, BBN).
>>>> Instead of hosting and propagating malware and viruses, or stealing
>>>> computer cycle to mine cryptocurrency, the BBN would simply store,
>>>> replicate, and distribute historical materials on demand.  No doubt
>>>> Richard's comment on Pirate Bay triggered this part of the dream.
>>>>
>>>> Such technology obviously exists, and survives despite serious efforts
>>>> to eradicate it.  Where the Internet was coopted for evil, perhaps the
>>>> evil could be coopted for good?
>>>>
>>>> Maybe even better would be a mechanism that didn't rely on theft and
>>>> subterfuge at all.  Perhaps something akin to the SETI mechanisms, where
>>>> people voluntarily donate their computer resources to analyze radio
>>>> signals, by simply downloading a piece of code and allowing it to run on
>>>> their computers.
>>>>
>>>> So, my dream was that some new software appears, which is freely
>>>> downloaded by thousands or millions of people around the world, which
>>>> uses a few GB of the disk on their machines, and stores historical
>>>> material in a redundant, highly survivable, persistent, distrubuted
>>>> historical warehouse.   One, or many, search engines (go Google!, Bing!,
>>>> DuckDuckGo!) would allow people to find material in the warehouse.
>>>> Anyone could contribute material to the historical archive by simply
>>>> placing a copy into the disk area of their machine that they've shared,
>>>> from where it would be automatically distributed and replicated.
>>>>
>>>> Perhaps this is one or more apps that can be downloaded.  Or perhaps a
>>>> plug in or extension to popular browsers.  Or maybe an addition to
>>>> existing mechanisms like BitTorrent.  Much of the code already exists,
>>>> as evidenced by the millions of computers unwittingly participating in a
>>>> Botnet, or willingly running code like SETI.
>>>>
>>>> Dave's offer of disk space is just the start.  I suspect many people
>>>> would contribute some unused chunk of their computers and network
>>>> capacity.  I have a few Terabytes on my NAS that are empty...you
>>>> probably do too.   With enough participants, the BBN becomes
>>>> self-suficient even as people come and go.
>>>>
>>>> All it would seem to take is for someone to sit down and write the
>>>> code....in the classic Internet spirit of Rough Consensus and Running
>>>> Code.
>>>>
>>>> Dave....?
>>>>
>>>> /Jack Haverty
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 2/24/19 7:42 AM, Dave Taht wrote:
>>>> > Joe Touch <touch at strayalpha.com> writes:
>>>> >
>>>> >> On Feb 23, 2019, at 12:42 PM, Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org> wrote:
>>>> >>
>>>> >>     But "internet-history at postel.org", and others like it, even RFC
>>>> >>     repositories, likely exist at the whim of their sponsor.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Indeed - even assuming volunteers run them - they’re’s still the
>>>> issue
>>>> >> of hosting and net access.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> I have old repositories (end2end-interest, for one) that even the
>>>> ISOC
>>>> >> has declined to host (even though the E2E-RG originated there).
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Then again, if you want to see the worst of “free riders”, go attend
>>>> >> an IETF. Companies send armies there for free training and free
>>>> >> consulting.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> PS - speaking as list admin, if anyone wants to offer a place to host
>>>> >> this list more reliably and archivally, please do let me know
>>>> (contact
>>>> >> me directly off-list).
>>>> > My email list server currently lives on linode in the cloud. The cost
>>>> is
>>>> > $5/month for 25GB of SSD storage. ( https://www.linode.com/pricing
>>>> > ). Has IPv6 and IPv4. It's paid for via a patreon donation.
>>>> >
>>>> > It's not like I'm using much of that box - or the bandwidth available
>>>> -
>>>> > how big are these archives?
>>>> >
>>>> > I wouldn't mind sharing that existing list server, but I long ago
>>>> > switched to violating whatever RFC it was that said starttls was a
>>>> > "should" - to *mandate* starttls only - which cuts down on spam (and
>>>> > sigh, about 13% of my measured potential correspondents, still). The
>>>> > biggest administrative cost I'd had was dealing with spam.
>>>> >
>>>> > If that's not an acceptable policy for these lists/archives, well, go
>>>> > burn the 5 bucks/mo on yer own.
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >> Joe
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >> _______
>>>> >> internet-history mailing list
>>>> >> internet-history at postel.org
>>>> >> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>>> >> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.
>>>> _______
>>>> internet-history mailing list
>>>> internet-history at postel.org
>>>> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>>> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> New postal address:
>>> Google
>>> 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor
>>> Reston, VA 20190
>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> New postal address:
>> Google
>> 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor
>> Reston, VA 20190
>>
>> _______
>> internet-history mailing list
>> internet-history at postel.org
>> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.
>>
> _______
> internet-history mailing list
> internet-history at postel.org
> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.
>
>
>
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