Through this entry on Doc Searl's blog I found a link to Jeffrey Zeldman's blog in which Zeldman writes:
"Anyone who has worked long and hard on a blog, zine, or web product realizes how ephemeral they are. (We are Ozymandias.) Preserving blogs is a multilayered task involving curatorial and editorial acumen, systems and programming skills, an understanding of copyright law, and more. If the preservationists do their job right, people 25 years from now will have some inkling of what we have created in this time. If they get it wrong, our work turns to sand."
I've thought about how ephemeral blogs can be unless there is some system for archiving them. If I die, or stop paying my Web host, all of the writing in my blog would disappear. Of course I keep backups, but who knows how to find and access them? Not even my wife knows. And it's not only my blog. I have all sorts of information on my computer and scattered on the Web on various services.
When I had a health scare that put me in the hospital for a week awhile back, I suddenly realized that so much of my life was on my computer, and that my wife, or an executor, would have no idea what to look for, where to find it, or what all my user names and passwords are. I'd told my wife the password to my encrypted password-management program, however she'd long forgotten it, or that the program even existed.
Or how about the Web sites I administer? I don't have many, but I do have a site for a client and a few non-profits that I volunteer with, and nobody aside from me knows how to access them. Not good.
I need to have a plan in place, and information in a safety deposit box to cover for me. Nobody likes thinking about their own demise, but people had better start thinking about what they have on their computers and parked all over the Web, and how others would be able to access that data.
Posted by Paul at March 17, 2006 08:27 PM