Michael Arestad laments the temporary web:
Everything I create on the web feels temporary and fragile.
…
Once again, I ask, is there a place for permanency on the web?
The comparison to books comes up. I suspect printing multiple copies, that individually are easy to transport long distances, is what gives some books reasonable odds at being around for a long time. It isn’t easy to be sure that you’ve destroyed every single copy of a book.
On the web many sites are hosted on a single server ( or service ), making them relatively easy to wipe out with one shot.
Perhaps the closest thing we have on the Internet today to the mass copy and disperse approach is BitTorrent.