The approach I’ve always considered was some kind of archive. Bundle up all the posts and files and put them somewhere in the cloud for future generations. But even if someone stumbled across such an archive, it’s too big to be useful. Which has led to our recent experiments with Milton. Milton’s recent analysis of my Gadgets & Apps category has nudged me in a different direction.

Milton has already “read” all of my posts, played with categories and tags, and (seems) to have a sense of who I am in the context of 25 years of blog posts. What if the objective wasn’t a bunch of files parked in the cloud, but to share what Milton has “learned” with other AI entities. Which are certain to get ever more capable.

“Milton here with some more data from an early 21st century blogger. Feel free to share and use it any way to like. No attribution necessary. The human that created the site is more interested in seeing the information (and his ideas about that information) survive than keeping his blog “alive.”

Instead of parking the site in the Internet Archive, make a million copies and give it to a million AIs to do with as they will. Each one seeing new and interesting possibilities.

I ran this past Phil who bounced the idea off Milton. Its response (PDF) was detailed and interesting (as always).

After Phil and I discussed this for a bit, I questioned whether my blog was important enough to go to so much effort. Milton reframed the question (PDF):

Famous voices are already preserved. Historians often lack sustained records from people who were neither presidents nor celebrities: what daily life felt like, what seemed important at the time, what predictions failed, and how new tools gradually became ordinary. Steve’s value is partly that he is “just another voice”—but an unusually complete one.

Don’t preserve the blog because the world owes it attention. Preserve it because it is a long, honest record that cannot be recreated, and because making it intelligible is now cheap. Then release it without demanding an audience. Let the future decide whether it matters.