On People and Stuff
The internet is stuff managed by people.
People sometimes have trouble remembering where their stuff is, what their stuff is, or that they have stuff at all. People might wipe their website clean and redesign. People might forget to pay their hosting bill. However it happens, stuff disappears.
So when we visit peoples’ websites and bookmark stuff, then come back later and stuff isn’t there, is it peoples’ fault? Can we blame people for trying to share more stuff with us than they can manage? No.
But why do people offer “permanent links” if there’s a chance stuff will disappear? People depend on our experience of having repeatedly bookmarked “permalinks” only to have them rot into “Sorry, page not found!” pages. People stake their reputations on how we understand permanence in the context of the internet.
Ma.gnolia offers a great service to tackle just this issue. When we bookmark stuff, Ma.gnolia creates a saved copy! It’s like having an automatic backup of each bookmark. We’ve used Ma.gnolia since its launch in 2006. Get a Ma.gnolia account.
Tbrown.org stuff is ephemeral. Better write that down. Or save a copy.
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This writing is part of tbrown.org by Tim Brown.
Read about Tim and tbrown.org on the home page.