This will be my 7032nd blog post.
Over on Twitter I've got 7,345 Tweets. Plus a ton of pictures on Flickr. Although I'm perfectly healthy and plan to keep going online indefinitely, blogging and tweeting have become a significant part of my professional and personal life. What happens to it when I pass away or become incapacitated?
I'd like to think that my online life will be preserved, just as my scholarship will be preserved. Unfortunately, the latter is on paper (a wonderful archival mechanism), while the former is on ephemeral bytes in cyberspace. TypePad is a paid service, as is Flickr Pro, and it seems I can only buy a domain name for 5 years at a time, so presumably they crap out when I stop paying. And free services, like Twitter or Blogger, can die at anytime (see, e.g., Google reader).
Is there a way to create some sort of permanent digital archive that will ensure the work we put into our online lives will be preserved?