Best way to host a website for 500 years?
Solution: Host a website and all the software in a future-proof virtual machine.
Alan Kay describes this is methode in [1] a Starship Conference talk about communication with aliens and in [2]the Cuniform paper.
The virtual machine solution is a solution to more general problems: how to use any software on any type of computing device at any time (even after most hardware and software knowledge has disappeared) and when even creator and user of software not share a language (as with intelligent aliens). They allow software to run bit-identical on any other software or hardware.
Smalltalk virtual machines are still running software sinds 1972(!) [4] and have been ported to the most diverse hardware and operating systems of any software I know of, even in javascript web browsers [3].
My websites are an existence proof. In 1987 I founded the first internet provider (as far as I know) and built some of the first websites in 1993. These websites have now been online for 28 years (actually longer but not in HTML format but Hypercard).
All my websites are written in Smalltalk (a programming language and operating system in a virtual machine image) and since 2007 in the Seaside continuation framework inside Squeak. All that I need to do is have a small simple virtual machine program running and responding to TCP/IP packets. The virtual machine executes whatever is in the image file, in this case a Squeak Smalltalk image and several Seaside websites).
Jecel Mattos de Assumpçao Jr. and Merik Voswinkel have been inventing and producing manycore microprocessors to execute most (universal) virtual machines like Smalltalk or QEMU under the brand names Morphle and SiliconSqueak since 2007.
Contact us at morphle at ziggo dot nl for more info about our universal parallel reconfigurable software defined virtual machine microprocessors.
Alan Kay describes this is methode in [1] a Starship Conference talk about communication with aliens and in [2]the Cuniform paper.
The virtual machine solution is a solution to more general problems: how to use any software on any type of computing device at any time (even after most hardware and software knowledge has disappeared) and when even creator and user of software not share a language (as with intelligent aliens). They allow software to run bit-identical on any other software or hardware.
Smalltalk virtual machines are still running software sinds 1972(!) [4] and have been ported to the most diverse hardware and operating systems of any software I know of, even in javascript web browsers [3].
My websites are an existence proof. In 1987 I founded the first internet provider (as far as I know) and built some of the first websites in 1993. These websites have now been online for 28 years (actually longer but not in HTML format but Hypercard).
All my websites are written in Smalltalk (a programming language and operating system in a virtual machine image) and since 2007 in the Seaside continuation framework inside Squeak. All that I need to do is have a small simple virtual machine program running and responding to TCP/IP packets. The virtual machine executes whatever is in the image file, in this case a Squeak Smalltalk image and several Seaside websites).
Jecel Mattos de Assumpçao Jr. and Merik Voswinkel have been inventing and producing manycore microprocessors to execute most (universal) virtual machines like Smalltalk or QEMU under the brand names Morphle and SiliconSqueak since 2007. Contact us at morphle at ziggo dot nl for more info about our universal parallel reconfigurable software defined virtual machine microprocessors.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wW89RHf4D4
[2] http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2015004_cuneiform.pdf
[3] https://computerhistory.org/blog/introducing-the-smalltalk-z...
[4] https://smalltalkzoo.thechm.org/