Ilkka Pepys
It's
too bad that blogosphere and Internet did not exist in earlier times. I
am sure that flame wars of the 1930's would have been interesting. In
this era of rapid change and growth, I wonder how long in the future
these blog postings will survive. If I tried my best, would it be
possible for me to ensure that these postings can be read a hundred or
even a thousand years from now, keeping them safe somewhere as flesh in
a cauldron?
My bet is that Internet will still exist after the next hundred years, although its culture and technical implementation (protocols, applications on top of protocols, hardware that moves the bits around) will evolve to become totally incomprehensible for us. But I can't imagine that the Internet itself would ever really be replaced by an equally powerful system without that system itself becoming a part of Internet any more than I can imagine the highway system ever being replaced by a better highway system that is parallel and separate from it. Once you build enough connections between the two systems, they automatically become one system.
It is more essential to consider whether BlogSpot will survive in a form that allows these postings to survive. Perhaps this question is a moot point, since the Internet of future will probably automatically replicate all data in style of P2P networks so that thousands of copies of every document exist around the world. (Since disk space grows exponentially, it is better to fully use it to minimize the need for data transfer.) We are already familiar with how difficult it is to try to read the contents of an old floppy disk, but Internet feels less physical so perhaps all data will migrate automatically to whatever technology people have and use in the future. And when BlogSpot eventually turns off its lights, many web archival services probably still offer its content. Assuming that somebody bothers to care about things that people wrote a few decades ago.
If these postings survive even a hundred years so that in the year 2106 some future people read this posting that ... well, greetings, you mighty people of the future! I hope that transhumanists have succeeded in their goals so that I am still alive and get to live with you in that wonderous world of yours. But if not, too bad, I guess that it was time for me to die. I just hope that I took many people with me to the cold embrace of the grave.
If my blog postings are one of the few surviving writings from our era after some cataclysm, perhaps you could write me as a character in some historical movie that is set in the ancient past of the beginning of the 21st century. You don't need to be that accurate with the exact details, since I guess that all years between 1960 and 2040 look pretty much same to you guys in the 22nd century. So if you write a character who is some 1970's dude who "keeps on trucking" while listening to his iPod, that's not really the worst historical inaccuracy that you could make, and totally irrelevant from your point of view.
As Paul Graham wrote in "What you can't say", the mainstream customs and opinions of our era will probably look silly and antiquated to you. At best they are quaint, at worst they are horrifying. So feel free to rewrite me to hold any enlightened social attitudes and opinions that are required in your era, even though none of them will probably even be invented until decades from now. And of course, through all kinds of funny coincidences I have met and personally known all great men of this era that you people can still remember in the far future, and had some really interesting adventures with them. For example, I helped Jack Bauer find Osaddam when he and his lackeys masqueraded as licensed nudists and tried to blow up the Internet itself!
If you have to, you can even depict me as having some kind of superpowers, if that is really necessary for storytelling purposes. The living know that they have to die, but the dead don't know anything, so if I am in my grave, I don't really mind if you take slight artistic liberties in depicting me. You could even get some future equivalent of Johnny Depp or Rudolf Valentino to play me. That would be immensely cool. Maybe I could have some kind of precognition or telepathic powers that I use to predict and fight crime.
My bet is that Internet will still exist after the next hundred years, although its culture and technical implementation (protocols, applications on top of protocols, hardware that moves the bits around) will evolve to become totally incomprehensible for us. But I can't imagine that the Internet itself would ever really be replaced by an equally powerful system without that system itself becoming a part of Internet any more than I can imagine the highway system ever being replaced by a better highway system that is parallel and separate from it. Once you build enough connections between the two systems, they automatically become one system.
It is more essential to consider whether BlogSpot will survive in a form that allows these postings to survive. Perhaps this question is a moot point, since the Internet of future will probably automatically replicate all data in style of P2P networks so that thousands of copies of every document exist around the world. (Since disk space grows exponentially, it is better to fully use it to minimize the need for data transfer.) We are already familiar with how difficult it is to try to read the contents of an old floppy disk, but Internet feels less physical so perhaps all data will migrate automatically to whatever technology people have and use in the future. And when BlogSpot eventually turns off its lights, many web archival services probably still offer its content. Assuming that somebody bothers to care about things that people wrote a few decades ago.
If these postings survive even a hundred years so that in the year 2106 some future people read this posting that ... well, greetings, you mighty people of the future! I hope that transhumanists have succeeded in their goals so that I am still alive and get to live with you in that wonderous world of yours. But if not, too bad, I guess that it was time for me to die. I just hope that I took many people with me to the cold embrace of the grave.
If my blog postings are one of the few surviving writings from our era after some cataclysm, perhaps you could write me as a character in some historical movie that is set in the ancient past of the beginning of the 21st century. You don't need to be that accurate with the exact details, since I guess that all years between 1960 and 2040 look pretty much same to you guys in the 22nd century. So if you write a character who is some 1970's dude who "keeps on trucking" while listening to his iPod, that's not really the worst historical inaccuracy that you could make, and totally irrelevant from your point of view.
As Paul Graham wrote in "What you can't say", the mainstream customs and opinions of our era will probably look silly and antiquated to you. At best they are quaint, at worst they are horrifying. So feel free to rewrite me to hold any enlightened social attitudes and opinions that are required in your era, even though none of them will probably even be invented until decades from now. And of course, through all kinds of funny coincidences I have met and personally known all great men of this era that you people can still remember in the far future, and had some really interesting adventures with them. For example, I helped Jack Bauer find Osaddam when he and his lackeys masqueraded as licensed nudists and tried to blow up the Internet itself!
If you have to, you can even depict me as having some kind of superpowers, if that is really necessary for storytelling purposes. The living know that they have to die, but the dead don't know anything, so if I am in my grave, I don't really mind if you take slight artistic liberties in depicting me. You could even get some future equivalent of Johnny Depp or Rudolf Valentino to play me. That would be immensely cool. Maybe I could have some kind of precognition or telepathic powers that I use to predict and fight crime.
One of the best lectures about programming I have ever seen are the video lectures of Hal Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman. The SICP.
Available at:
SICP Video Lectures
I guess you have already seen them but I am curious, what do you think about Scheme as a language?
Posted by Anonymous | 9:14 AM