Cost Of Non-Vertical Integration
I was brought up on the comforting assumption that web-site lives were around for an average of 100 days. Time’s arrow has shortened the average life to 44 ( at least upon these assumptions = it could be less ); this emphasises the necessity for pruning of lost links — cutting dead-wood is always to be undertaken with enthusiasm — and that to ensure one’s own pages continue to offer what they are meant, that hot-linking even if agreed with a host site should be severely discouraged. All media: pictures, music and video should be stored on the same server; storage is cheap enough and will probably not get more expensive for non-critical applications. Obviously one’s server will go down now and again/eventually, but if that means one’s media is unobtainable, the main website is equally so.
The rapid loss is not to be regretted too much, except for people’s personal works and studies of historical fact. Probably it doesn’t matter if 95% of commercial and intellectual webpages are lost forever tomorrow: the amount of dross, and severely outdated information, clogs the internet; just as that it would not matter, except to the persons concerned, if 95% of people snuffed it. I am not advocating this, nor minimising tragedy; merely conflating Keynes’ quote, ‘In the long run, we are all dead‘ with the point that nobody except God truly cares even in the short run, and He is fully capable of dealing with all eventualities. [ I doubt that He Cares about the future of the Internet however. ]
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