Clayton Cramer poses an interesting question, asking "Where Do Your Web Pages Go When You Die?"
As I was pondering this depressing thought today, I remembered something that I learned in Ancient Near East class (and may even remember correctly). Old Kingdom Egyptians may not have had a notion of an individual afterlife for anyone but the pharoah, his family, and a few lucky retainers who were killed to join him. Apparently by the Middle Kingdom, enough mid-level bureaucrats were beginning to have similar hopes for a life eternal, and so they start doing the mummification thing, too. To make sure that their tombs were cared for, and that someone would make appropriate offerings on their behalf, they set up what were effectively eternal charitable foundations with some of their wealth to keep someone doing the right thing--and I guess that at least for a few generations, this actually worked.
And so eternal web hosting is the pyramid of the 21st century, without all the messy body parts. I like the idea, and I hope my family keeps my site up after I die... though I'm sure all my brilliant thoughts will be engraved in marble before then, anyway.
