What happens to you when you’re dead on the internet?

I had an acquaintance that I know of, peripherally, that died recently. This person was a prolific blogger, ending in July of 2008 but starting way back in 2002. 6 years worth of journaling, an online diary of a persons life. Will this blog be deleted by the site that hosts it? (a well known blogging company) Will it be relegated to be the odd Google search result? This problem is what makes the Internet Archive pretty powerful. As much as possible a living, detailed history of the internet.

Thinking long term, 50 maybe 100 years what that information would b worth, how much it would contain. 100 years of records of behavior. Further, 1000 years of human interaction detailed on the internet. Emails, forum posts, audio, video, artwork from every form of man. What would we give to have as complete information of 1000 years in the past? A vast and complete archive of the internet and it’s traffic I think is important.

Funded in perpetuity, kept as public vault a record of humanity. That would provide countless answers to questions in the future. Knowing and understanding who we are, what we are. Which is what makes the internet such an important thing in the terms of mankind.

We’re going to see where we are as humanity the same reason that geographically remote areas have tribal groups we’ll see outliers to borrow a word. We’ll see some places where access will be restricted by religions that don’t want to corrupt they’re fundamentalist believers. Restricted by politick to keep citizens from learning anything other than the proscribed doctrine, and so we have this flow of access to the internet, this tide of humanity, pockets of civilizations not bound by geography but by shared belief, shared experiences and locales.

These will be the internets tribal groups and access to the internet is going to reshape the political and racial boundaries of peoples.