Introduction  Software  Hardware  Business/Social 

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Introduction

In order to better understand how to archive digital data for the long term (centuries) The Long Now Foundation has initiate the Long Mail project, a long term E-mail archive. We hope to understand the challenges when saving digital information for centuries.

Dangers To Digital Data

Digital Information is vulnerable in that it needs a relatively complex container (digital hardware) which is inherently short lived. Threats can be categorized in the following hierarchy:

Hardware failure

Manufacturing defect

Design error

Age

Software failure

Design flaws

Implementation flaws

Insufficient adaptability/scalability

Natural disaster

Intended destruction

Corporate

Governmental

Cultural/Religious

Random Vandalism

Unintended destruction

Neglect

Incompetent handling

Loss of knowledge of location of data

Long Mail Services

The Long Mail project intends to offer three primary archival services:

Storage: Durable, secure storage of e-mail for the life of the user and beyond.

Access: Search and retrieval of the entirety of a user's stored e-mail with an emphasis on sophisticated temporal browsing.

Message Holding/Delayed Delivery: Send an e-mail to a person/organization in the future (e.g. a reminder to yourself or a message to your grandchildren who will inherit your e-mail account.)