Kevin Godby

While reading Kurzweil’s book The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, I came across a section in chapter 6 titled “The Longevity of Information.” In this section, Kurzweil discusses how it’s difficult to keep digital information accessible in lieu of changing media formats, file formats going extinct, and degradation of magnetic and optical media. In footnote 42, he writes:

Stweart Brand, “Written on the Wind,” Civilization Magazine, November 1998 (“01998” in Long Now terminology), available online at http://www.longnow.org/10klibrary/library.htm.

The link is dead and now leads to a 404 page.

Unfortunately, the irony doesn’t end there. I started at their home page to try to find a copy of the article. I clicked on Projects thinking that the “10klibrary” mentioned in the URL may be listed there. Instead, I found a description of the “Long Server” project. It sounded similar to what I was looking for, so I clicked on the Long Server heading and found myself on yet another 404 page.

In any case, I’ve found an article by Tim Berners-Lee (FOAF) that may be useful: Cool URIs don’t change.