How are we preparing for the Long Web?

What will the Internet look like in 2036? 2046? These are questions that are near-impossible to answer. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. To be fair, this question is more philosophical than logistical... but I can't help myself.

One of the principles of the IndieWeb is the [**Long Web**](https://indieweb.org/2016/Longweb)[^1], or [**Longevity**](https://indieweb.org/longevity). Funnily enough, the article on the concept is a stub, so consider this my contribution.

[^1]: A session at IndieWeb Summit 2016

In a weird way, people and companies are kind of just winging it and building for today. Most in the field are trendhoppers and fair weather participants. In the past there's been [AngularJS](https://docs.angularjs.org/misc/version-support-status), [Backbone.js](https://github.com/jashkenas/backbone/issues/4244), [Ember.js](https://www.cbtnuggets.com/blog/technology/programming/is-ember-js-dead), [Meteor.js](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16782266), [Gatsby](https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby/discussions/39062), [Apache Cordova](https://www.iotforall.com/press-releases/apache-cordova-is-retired-alternatives-for-cross-platform-mobile-development-in-2022), just to name a few. Websites are created with current hottest frameworks for whatever iteration of CSS and JavaScript works with Chrome's Blink Rendering Engine and V8 JavaScript Engine at any given moment. You'll have to pay a pretty penny for updates and maintenance.

That said, there are niche platforms that *are* focusing on existing forever. In 2013, after Twitter shut down Posterous, the original cofounders Garry Tan and Brett Gibson launched [Posthaven](https://posthaven.com/), designed to never ever shut down. Sure, [the blog](https://blog.posthaven.com/) hasn't been updated since 2016, but the fact it's still online ten years beyond that is a good sign, right?

On the more expensive end of the spectrum, [Automattic](https://indieweb.org/Automattic) launched their [WordPress.com 100-Year Plan](https://wordpress.com/blog/2025/02/12/100-year-domains-plans/) in 2025, a commitment to keep your site online for a century, complete with trust accounts, mirrored data centers, and active snapshot backups in the [Internet Archive's Wayback Machine](https://web.archive.org/). It only costs $38,000, a great deal! It's an admirable (if audacious) idea, but it does raise the obvious question: what happens to the plan if Automattic itself doesn't make it to 2125? They've tried to answer this with contingency protocols, but the honest answer is nobody really knows.

Speaking of, there *are* certain metrics we can look at that are set in stone. For example, the maximum amount of time you can renew **a domain name** (which I just [wrote about](https://brennan.day/a-room-of-ones-own-in-2026-