undefined | Better HN

0 pointsrossdavidh4y ago0 comments

Look at what has lasted 500 years, and use those media. Websites are not among them.

1) stone 2) books if printed on the right kind of paper 3) metal if it's not something subject to rust

Even if it is possible to make a website that lasts 500 years, I expect we haven't figured out how yet. I'm sure it took people a while to figure out how to make long-lasting tombstones; early North American ones were often made out of sandstone or wood, and are illegible or completely gone now. You may be one of the very first people to give thought to how to make a website that will last that long; what are the odds you will get it right on the very first attempt?

0 comments

8 comments · 3 top-level

junon4y ago· 3 in thread

This isn't a fair premise. Websites have not existed for 500 years and were not possible until roughly around the time of their inception.

hnfong4y ago

It doesn't have to be fair. Things come and go. To host information for X years, statistically the things most likely to last are those that already existed for at least that amount of time.

Or you can take your chances, which, again statistically speaking, is not good if we're talking about websites lasting 500 years.

1 more reply

philipswood4y ago

True, but what percentage of electronic records from the 70s are still readable?

rossdavidhOP4y ago

Sorry, that was the point I was trying to make, perhaps I should have made it more explicitly.

oceanplexian4y ago· 1 in thread

Earth is a terrible place to store things for hundreds of years. I bet you could draw your website into Moon dust and come back hundreds of years later and it would still be there right next to your footprints.

rossdavidhOP4y ago

Interesting point, although a random asteroid might be better, because less likely to be trod upon in the next 500 years.

codazoda4y ago· 1 in thread

I recently saw headstones with photos on them. Now I’m thinking about writing a bunch of stuff and encoding it in a QR code on a headstone. The QR code is likely to be replaced with something else, but maybe if it says “QR Code” under it they could snap a picture and figure it out.

bergie4y ago

I can see future archaeologists classifying QR Codes as an “ornamental technique popular in early Plastic Age cultures“.

Somewhere a crackpot conspiracy theorist group will be trying to claim that the QR Codes contain messages from this long-lost civilisation…

2 more replies

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse