I think it's a historically significant dataset. We've seen other datasets be preserved, such as GitHub arctic vault.
I agree that it's tenuous. I would give it 20% odds of hitting the 500 year mark at best. And I don't think all of the data will survive.
But if archive.org ever becomes unsustainable to run, the existing data will likely be preserved. Lots of companies will be incentivized to continue hosting the data, as it's excellent PR if nothing else. They don't need to continue gathering the data, just host it.
Hosting is only going to become cheaper as t -> infinity, and given the massive amount of compute I've seen Google wield, it's hard to imagine that an operation like archive.org can't find some way to be preserved.
All that said, the biggest threat is sudden data loss. This only works as long as the data doesn't get lost. Has archive.org posted their operations policies anywhere? It would be interesting reading.
I agree that it's tenuous. I would give it 20% odds of hitting the 500 year mark at best. And I don't think all of the data will survive.
But if archive.org ever becomes unsustainable to run, the existing data will likely be preserved. Lots of companies will be incentivized to continue hosting the data, as it's excellent PR if nothing else. They don't need to continue gathering the data, just host it.
Hosting is only going to become cheaper as t -> infinity, and given the massive amount of compute I've seen Google wield, it's hard to imagine that an operation like archive.org can't find some way to be preserved.
All that said, the biggest threat is sudden data loss. This only works as long as the data doesn't get lost. Has archive.org posted their operations policies anywhere? It would be interesting reading.