Ask HN: How would you build a service that is still be functional in 1000 years? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How would you build a service that is still be functional in 1000 years?

2 pointsmtw4 comments

Assuming that Internet is here to say, I want fixed text (less than 10ko) to be published on the Internet at regular pre-determined times in the future, for 10, 100 or even 1000 years. Obviously you can't have a standard web server because the hosting company would go bankrupt. There are also issue of electronic component decay, or changing protocols and languages. I've thought about self-replicating web software that would self-evolve with the contained data, or maybe an autonomous raspberry pi-unit (solar panel, enclosed in a glass unit) that would broadcast wirelessly the text. Other ideas?

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Published where on the internet? If it had a given domain name then you need to manage that. If it's on a specific site, then you need to know that it's there.

For 10 years it's easy - pay a few dozen people to make sure it happens. 100 years is harder, but doable with the same fashion. For a movie example, consider the Western Union message that Doc Brown sent in 1885 to Marty McFly in 1955, in Back to the Future II. Brown had the advantage of knowing that Western Union would exist, but I can imagine similar systems working.

After all, there are long-running experiments which take more than a lifetime, like Beal's germination experiment which started in 1879 and is expected to end in 2100. With enough money you can set up a fund, with a requirement that the information be published at set times in the future.

For 1,000 years? Forget about it. There are few human systems which have worked for that long, and your best bet is to write a document that's interesting enough so as to inspire someone in the future to transmit that document for you. For example, read http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/97nov/teller.htm and see how someone in 1916 convinced someone in 1997 to do something.

For an entertaining fable, read http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=11894 regarding a tale of New College, Oxford needing new oak beams.

For a related story, check out "Humanity's Final Game," the story of the winner of this year's GDC Game Design Challenge: http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/28/4158218/humanitys-final-ga...

The winner's efforts show the difficulty in designing something that will last, and be recognizable, in thousands of years. It was constructed of titanium and glass, the instructions were custom pictographs, and the location where it was placed was carefully orchestrated.

This illustrates the problem with trying to span such a long time. What will the world even look like in 100 years, let alone a millennium? Will we have the Internet? Will we speak any recognizable language? Heck, will we live in this solar system?

Create a cult. Induct people in it making them pledge to broadcast this text at predetermined times and make their children and grandchildren pledge the same.

Although this idea is quite stupid owing to extremely large possibility of the cult dying out, its protected from decay of devices and protocols with time.

Not an Internet service, but the Long Now Foundation has started construction on a physical clock that's designed tot to last 10,000 years.

-http://longnow.org/clock/ -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation

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