Doc Searls has a long piece with lots of fear in it, and as someone who decided early-on that my creativity would exist more or less only in computer bits, it's fear that I share.

Flickr, Frontier and HTTPS

Like Doc, I too got onboard early with Flickr. I felt somewhat covered because I had scripts that ran in Frontier that archived my Flickr photos in an S3 bucket. This code died earlier this year when Flickr transitioned to HTTPS. Frontier doesn't do HTTPS, actually it does, but it's a pain in the butt to convert to it, and my focus is in JavaScript now, so I just let the app fail.

It's still running, calling Flickr every ten minutes to see if I uploaded anything new. Flickr is telling it each time that it's no longer willing to speak to it. The program does not understand, so it keeps asking, as if Flickr were listening. If I remembered which server it's on I would put it out of its misery. But I find it symbolic and hopeful and kind of poetic, so I don't do anything at all.

Long-lived orgs

I still think the ideal way to approach this problem is to get an endowment for a project to create a more robust personal web and do it in conjunction with a long-lived institution, most likely a university. Harvard, where both Doc and I worked for a while has been around since the 1600s. It seems if any entity will still be around in a few hundred years, it'd be a university like Harvard. Or perhaps the University of Colorado. Oxford. Etc.

Do you remember Pan Am?

I recently re-watched 2001 A Space Odyssey. It was an interesting experience. The story is slow and you're left to put the pieces together and it's art so I assume it means something different to everyone who watches it.

The last time I watched it was probably in the 1980s, well before 2001. Now it's just as long after 2001. We still haven't sent men to Saturn, nor do we have colonies on the moon. But many of the things that seemed futuristic when the movie was made now seem horribly dated. Example: They thought they were being cute by showing us how the future would transform then-familiar brands like Pan Am and Howard Johnson's, both of which are now extinct.

Pan Am was a classy airline we dreamed of flying, all over the world, back when flying was something dreamy. Howard Johnson's was a ubiquitous chain of orange-topped roadside restaurants that served delicious fried clams. Now it's a chain of motels that supposedly makes you smarter. Clever advertising, but an obvious lie.

Gets you thinking about what's really lasting!

PS: Ooops the hotels that make you smarter are Holiday Inns, another iconic brand from the 60s.