http://neilsloane.com/doc/eternal.html
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Proposal for an Internet Service: The Eternal Home Page
N. J. A. Sloane
Information Sciences Research Center,
AT&T Labs - Research, Florham Park, New Jersey 07932, U.S.A.
Email address: njasloane@gmail.com.
December 13, 1996. Revised November 11, 1997.
Abstract
This paper describes a possible Internet service that some major
organization such as Harvard University, AT&T, the Institute of
Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the American Mathematical
Society, the American Medical Association, or even the Vatican, might
offer: a home page "in perpetuity". Such a "perpetual page" or
"eternity page" or "e-memorial page" would be a home page that the
organization would help the customer set up, with a guarantee that it
would last for (say) 500 years, or until the organization no longer
exists. It would list all the things that the customer would like to
be remembered for (accomplishments, family, etc.). As the population
of the U.S. ages, such a service should prove very popular. After
all, almost everyone wants to be remembered by posterity.
Details
* The name for this service needs to be chosen with care, and of
course registered. "Eternity service", "Perpetual page",
"Eternity page", "E-memorial page", "Everlasting page" are a few
possibilities. I will use "Perpetual page" in this paper.
* The first version of this paper was written in December 1996,
although the idea for the "Perpetual home page" first occurred to
me in January 1996. Not surprisingly, it turns out that other
people have had similar ideas, and there may be some commercial
services that provide electronic gravestones available even now.
But my vision is that this service would be offered by a major
organization or institute, that has already existed for a long
time and has some chance of existing 500 years from now. And I'm
not thinking of tombstones, but home-pages.
* The "Perpetual page" could include such things as:
+ photographs of houses, boats, paintings, other precious
possessions
+ lists of awards, accomplishments
+ writings, drawings, songs, even unpublished novels (disk
space is cheap)
+ links to perpetual pages of one's family (including
ancestors!) and friends
* This is the customer's chance to write their own New York Times
obituary page, or "time capsule". (Many people do not realize
that except for a handful of major obituaries, every obituary
item in the New York Times has to be purchased at about $40 per
line -- this can be a humiliating experience for the next-of-kin.
Setting up a "Perpetual page" in advance for the sick and elderly
could be both therapeutic and comforting for the family.)
* There should be a generous amount of disk space available for
each page - a minimum of ten megabytes, to allow a number of
photographs to be included. (Most Internet providers at present
do not allow nearly enough disk space.) As my colleague Andrew
Odlyzko has pointed out in his discussion of the future of
scholarly journals, the cost of disk space is dropping so rapidly
that it is likely that the cost of providing a service in
perpetuity will be not much more than that of providing it for
one year.
* The organization would help the customer set up the initial page,
and would provide instructions on how to maintain it. A "help
desk" would be part of the service.
* One way to structure the offer might be to tell customers: For a
one-time fee of $X, we will provide you with Y MB of storage, and
as long as you pay a small monthly fee, you can keep modifying
it. Once you stop paying the monthly fee (say because you die, or
switch to a different provider) we will keep the latest version
forever.
* Part of the offer would be a guarantee that when the Internet is
replaced by some other service in a few years, all the "Perpetual
pages" would be automatically converted to the new medium.
* It is important that the organization offering the servce should
have been in existence for a long time, and have a good chance of
still existing 500 hundred years from now. The organizations
mentioned in the Abstract certainly satisfy these conditions, and
it is easy to think of others. Such a service would not carry
much conviction if offered by some tiny local Internet service
provider.
* This is the first time in history that such a thing is possible.
* Incidentally, the New York Times} for Saturday Dec. 7 1996
describes (on page D2) a patent, US 5,517,791, for a new
tombstone design that can incorporate a person's life story -
including photographs. So ideas like the one I am proposing are
"in the air".
* As one may verify by visiting cemeteries in New Jersey,
tombstones are rarely legible after a hundred years have passed.
One of the advertisements for the proposed service could show a
family searching through a cemetery full of grave stones that
have been worn smooth, looking for the lost grave of an ancestor.
Furthermore, as the world population continues to explode,
cemeteries will become increasingly irrelevant.
* The "perpetual page" service would especially appeal to mature
customers. There are several ways in which advertisements could
point out the futility of earlier attempts to be remembered, even
by world leaders. For example, one advertisement could show a
replica of the original Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, after which
all later mausoleums are named. (See The Oxford History of the
Classical World, ed. J. Boardman et al., Oxford, 1993, p. 150.)
[maus1]
One of the Seven Wonders of the World, it was built in the year
353 for King Mausolus of Caria by his wife. It no longer exists.
"But if King Mausolus had had a perpetual page, we could still
read about his victories today ...".
* An alternative way in which the "perpetual page" could be used is
by family and friends after the death of a loved one, by setting
up a permanent memorial for the deceased. The Page would need to
have an authorized keeper, to screen out inappropriate material.
A certain amount of permanent space would be purchased, to which
interested parties could contribute in any way they wished.
* Another advertisement could have a voice reading P. B. Shelley's
poem Ozymandias, while the picture shows dust blowing around an
appropriate ruin:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
[ozy4]
* It will also give all the unpublished poets and writers, the
unrecognized painters and musicians, the scientists whose
theories are rejected, the opportunity to have their work
immortalized.
* Yet another advertisement could have Jessye Norman singing the
moving and unforgettable aria "Remember Me" from Henry Purcell's
"Dido and Aeneas". (The formal title is "Thy hand Belinda - when
I am laid in Earth" [Philips CD 434 161-2].)
Acknowledgements: I am grateful to Colin Mallows, Andrew Odlyzko,
Susanna Cuyler Sloane and Nambi Seshadri for a number of helpful
comments.
See also: My home page | Related links