[Foundation-l] Long-term archiving of Wikimedia content

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/5/5 Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:
> Not true.  I'm considering the historical value, but I'm recognizing the
> fact that it must be heavily discounted due to the fact that it takes place
> so far in the future.

I'm not convinced that discounting to present value applies here. You
can't describe all of life in terms of economics (in fact, it seems
describing economics in terms of economics isn't entirely wise!). How
do you assign a monetary value to future historical knowledge? For
that matter, how do you assign a monetary value to present historical
knowledge? Or any kind of knowledge? In economics things have value
due to scarcity, knowledge is freely reproducible, so the concept of
scarcity doesn't really apply - either it exists, or it doesn't.
Access to knowledge may have monetary value, but the existence of the
knowledge doesn't, the concept just doesn't apply.