Mário Nogueira

A Personal Information System: Architecture and Implementation

2026-10-22T00:00:00Z

(LLMs were used to help organize and translate this post)

In my previous post, I described the principles guiding my personal information system: security, privacy, simplicity, efficiency, sovereignty, portability and longevity.

This time, I want to get more concrete and explain how these principles translate into an actual implementation. The goal is not to build a sophisticated infrastructure, but to create a system I can understand, control, maintain and recover, without depending excessively on external services.

Three endpoints, clearly defined roles

The architecture relies on three endpoints: my laptop, a Raspberry Pi at home and my mobile phone.

The laptop: the authoritative archive

My main computer is a Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 4 running Alpine Linux, with Sway on Wayland.

It serves as my daily workstation and the authoritative repository for my personal information. Documents, personal records, professional files, photographs, music, archives and scripts all live on its filesystem.

I deliberately keep information in ordinary files and directories rather than building the system around a proprietary application or database. This makes the data accessible through different tools and simplifies migration to other software or hardware.

The desktop environment follows the same philosophy. LibreOffice and Firefox cover general productivity and browsing, while lightweight tools such as nnn, Zathura, imv and gThumb handle file management and media viewing.

The laptop also collects information from the other endpoints and runs the main backup procedures.

The Raspberry Pi: a service intermediary

The second endpoint is a Raspberry Pi 5, also running Alpine Linux.

Its role is deliberately limited. It provides a WireGuard VPN endpoint, a Syncthing service for receiving photographs from my mobile phone, and a Radicale server for synchronising contacts.

I treat this machine as an intermediary rather than a primary repository. Information received from the phone is eventually transferred to the laptop, which remains the authoritative archive.

This separation means that the Raspberry Pi provides useful services without becoming the sole place where important information lives.

The mobile phone: an information source

My phone runs GrapheneOS, with an emphasis on avoiding closed-source applications wherever practical.

It is primarily an information source rather than the place where my personal archive lives. Photographs are synchronised through Syncthing, while contacts are managed through Radicale.

This division of responsibilities keeps the phone useful without making it the centre of the system.

How information flows

The architecture separates information collection from the authoritative archive and from the mechanisms that protect it.

The main flow is straightforward:

The phone connects to the Raspberry Pi through WireGuard.
Syncthing transfers photographs to the Raspberry Pi, while Radicale provides contact synchronisation.
The laptop connects to the Raspberry Pi through its own WireGuard connection and periodically copies the relevant mobile data into its local data directory.
The laptop's regular backup procedures protect this information alongside the rest of the archive.

The transfer from the Raspberry Pi to the laptop runs every 30 minutes. This introduces a short delay between capturing information on the phone and having it included in the laptop's regular backups.

The Raspberry Pi therefore acts as a temporary collection point, while the laptop remains the authoritative repository. This also makes the overall architecture easier to maintain: the supporting services can change without changing where the information ultimately belongs.

Security through separation and simplicity

Security is implemented in several layers rather than delegated to a single application.

The laptop uses encrypted Btrfs filesystems and an nftables firewall, with no publicly accessible ports. Connections to the Raspberry Pi take place through WireGuard, with SSH also allowed through eth0 as a fallback in case of VPN problems.

The Raspberry Pi follows a different security model. Its filesystem is not encrypted because I want the machine to restart and resume its services without waiting for someone to unlock the disk. This is an explicit trade-off: the server does not hold the authoritative archive of my critical information, and its firewall restricts access to the VPN endpoint and SSH from the local network. Syncthing and Radicale are accessible through WireGuard rather than directly from the internet.

The home router forwards the WireGuard port to the Raspberry Pi, allowing the phone to establish a secure connection when needed.

The distinction between the two computers is intentional. The laptop prioritises the confidentiality of the main archive; the Raspberry Pi prioritises the availability of a small set of supporting services.

Backups: multiple destinations, different purposes

A backup strategy should account for more than hardware failure. Accidental deletion, corruption, compromised systems and loss of access to a service can all put information at risk.

My current approach combines several mechanisms.

Daily encrypted cloud backups

The laptop uses Restic to back up its data and configuration daily to an encrypted repository in Backblaze B2. The Raspberry Pi has its own Restic repository in a separate B2 bucket.

Keeping the repositories separate avoids making both machines dependent on a single backup repository.

An offline local copy

Periodically, I synchronise the laptop's filesystem to an encrypted external hard drive using rsync. The drive is connected only for the duration of the synchronisation.

This provides a local recovery option that is not continuously attached to the system, reducing exposure to incidents that might affect connected storage.

An additional cloud copy

I still maintain an encrypted rclone synchronisation to another B2 bucket. This is somewhat legacy at the moment, and I may remove it if it no longer provides enough additional value.

I also synchronise selected information to Proton Drive manually. These operations are synchronisations, not substitutes for versioned backups.

That distinction matters: synchronisation keeps copies aligned and can propagate unwanted changes or deletions. Backups serve a different purpose by providing a means to recover protected copies of information.

Automation and monitoring

Routine administration on the laptop is performed by root through scheduled jobs. These include system updates, Restic backups and health checks.

A small health-check script periodically checks aspects such as updates, services and firewall status. It writes the results to a state file that the Sway status bar can display.

The laptop also retrieves health information from the Raspberry Pi, giving me a consolidated view of both endpoints without having to inspect each machine manually.

This is a deliberately lightweight approach to monitoring. I prefer a small script whose behaviour I can inspect over introducing a separate monitoring platform that would require additional infrastructure and maintenance.

I also try to keep everyday data handling separate from privileged administrative and backup operations, reducing unnecessary coupling between normal use and the mechanisms responsible for protecting the archive.

What remains to be done

The architecture is functional, but it is not finished.

Two improvements remain particularly important.

The first is to prepare encrypted recovery USB drives containing the information, configuration files, keys and recovery procedures needed to rebuild the system. I intend to keep one at home and another in a physically separate location.

The second is to introduce another independent backup destination, probably with a European provider such as OVHcloud, reducing dependence on a single cloud provider.

Recovery deserves particular attention. Encrypted backups are not enough if the keys are lost, the configuration is unavailable or the restoration procedure is unclear. Recovery instructions and the necessary configuration information are therefore part of the archive itself, and will also be included in the recovery media.

Final thoughts

The architecture is not built around any single application or service. It is built around the information itself.

Alpine Linux provides a relatively small operating system foundation. Standard files and directories preserve access to the data. WireGuard, Syncthing and Radicale provide specific communication and synchronisation capabilities. Restic, rsync and encrypted storage address different recovery needs.

Each component has a limited, understandable role. The overall system remains useful without requiring a single vendor to control the entire workflow.

For me, this is the practical meaning of sovereignty and longevity in a personal information system: knowing where the information lives, how it moves, how it is protected and, crucially, how to recover it when something goes wrong.

The architecture will continue to evolve, but the guiding principle will remain the same: the system should serve the information, not the other way around.

Untold Stories

2026-10-18T00:00:00Z

(LLMs were used to help organize and translate this post)

A photography collection

Untold Stories brings together images that, for me, seem to conceal a story. They may depict objects, people, or ordinary scenes, but somehow they trigger a sense of curiosity, unease, or anticipation — the feeling that there is something more to be discovered, something that remains just beyond what the image reveals.

I find myself wondering why? or how? What happened here? What passions, frustrations, moments of happiness, or experiences of pain led to this particular state of existence? What sequence of events brought these people, objects, or places to the point at which I encountered them?

Perhaps the stories exist only in my imagination. The photographs offer no answers, only clues, fragments, and possibilities. Yet I can't help feeling that there is something to be understood, a narrative hidden beneath the surface. These images are invitations to imagine what came before, what might have happened, and what remains untold.

The photographs were taken between 2008 and 2017, using various digital cameras, mobile phones, and medium format film cameras.

Suspected Relations

2026-10-18T00:00:00Z

(LLMs were used to help organize and translate this post)

A photography collection

Suspected Relations explores the connections that can emerge between two objects simply because they happen to share the same space at a particular moment. A symmetry, an opposition, a contrast, or a shape that seems to continue from one object into another can suddenly establish a relationship that might otherwise go unnoticed.

These relationships are rarely inherent to the objects themselves. They emerge from coincidence — from the way things happen to be positioned in space, from the moment in which I encounter them, and from the particular point of view through which I see them. A small shift in perspective, or a moment later, and the connection might disappear entirely.

I'm fascinated by this kind of visual association, where unrelated elements seem to interact, complement, or contradict one another. By framing them together, I try to capture these fleeting relationships and turn a chance encounter into a composition that suggests a connection, leaving its interpretation open to the viewer.

The photographs were collected between 2007 and 2018, using various digital cameras, mobile phones, and medium and large format film cameras.

Solitude

2026-10-18T00:00:00Z

(LLMs were used to help organize and translate this post)

A photography collection

Solitude explores the relationship between empty space, isolation, and the individual. Through isolated objects, sparse compositions, and vast, seemingly empty environments, these images seek to convey a sense of loneliness and the smallness of the self in relation to the world.

Yet solitude is not necessarily about absence or emptiness. The same space that makes us feel small can also reveal a sense of freedom and possibility. What initially appears as nothingness can become an open field for imagination, inviting us to consider what might exist, what might happen, and what we might find within it.

I'm drawn to this duality: the tension between the vulnerability of being alone and the quiet grandeur of the space that surrounds us. In these photographs, emptiness becomes more than a background; it becomes the subject itself.

The photographs were collected between 2008 and 2022, using digital cameras, medium and large format film cameras, and mobile phones.

Slow Motion

2026-10-18T00:00:00Z

(LLMs were used to help organize and translate this post)

A photography collection

Slow Motion explores the transformation of movement into abstraction through long exposures and techniques such as the use of neutral density (ND) filters. By allowing time to accumulate within a single exposure, moving elements become blurred forms, often set against still backgrounds or anchored by objects that retain their definition.

The result is a different way of seeing reality. In waterscapes, movement can dissolve into smooth, almost idyllic surfaces, creating scenes that feel detached from the passage of time. In other images, the blur becomes a way of compressing movement into a still frame — capturing something of the experience of motion within a single, frozen view of the world.

I'm interested in this tension between movement and stillness, between the fleeting and the permanent, and in how extending the time of an exposure can reveal a reality that our eyes cannot quite perceive in the same way.

The photographs span the period from 2007 to 2018, taken with digital cameras and medium and large format film cameras.

Natural Born Beauty

2026-10-18T00:00:00Z

(LLMs were used to help organize and translate this post)

A photography collection

Natural Born Beauty is perhaps the most traditional collection in my photography portfolio, exploring the beauty of the natural world through landscapes, textures, and natural scenes.

I've never felt particularly successful at capturing the kind of dramatic, sweeping landscapes that traditionally define landscape photography. Instead, I've often found myself drawn to narrower scenes, more intimate compositions, and sometimes just small details — fragments of nature that might otherwise go unnoticed. These are the subjects that tend to catch my eye, where textures, shapes, light, and patterns become as interesting as the landscape itself.

The collection brings together photographs taken between 2012 and 2019, using a variety of photographic tools and approaches, from DSLRs and other digital cameras to medium and large format film cameras.

Messages

2026-10-18T00:00:00Z

(LLMs were used to help organize and translate this post)

A photography collection

Messages brings together images in which written or graphical elements take center stage. Sometimes the message is explicit; sometimes it's just a hint, a fragment, or an ambiguous sign. And sometimes, it may not have been intended as a message at all — yet, to me, it still seems to communicate something.

Words and symbols can acquire new meanings through their surroundings. A message may be altered by the decay of the surface on which it was written, partially obscured by time, or transformed by its juxtaposition with other elements. What was once clear may become ambiguous, while something seemingly random can suddenly suggest a meaning.

Whether intentional or accidental, meaningful or purely aesthetic, these elements catch my attention because I feel there's something to be read in them. Not necessarily a message with a single interpretation, but an invitation to look, associate, and imagine.

The photographs were taken between 2018 and 2021, using mobile phones and other digital cameras.

Lost Memories

2026-10-18T00:00:00Z

(LLMs were used to help organize and translate this post)

A photography collection

Lost Memories explores the beauty of fog and other forms of transparency that partially conceal the world around us. Through obscured landscapes and blurred objects, these photographs capture a reality that is present but no longer entirely accessible.

I'm fascinated by the way fog transforms familiar scenes, softening their shapes and dissolving their boundaries. It reminds me of how memory works: experiences that were once vivid and sharply defined gradually lose their clarity, leaving behind only fragments, impressions, and blurred glimpses of what once was.

In these images, concealment becomes a way of revealing something else. As the details fade, the atmosphere takes over, creating scenes that feel suspended somewhere between reality and recollection — between what we can still see and what we are slowly losing.

The photographs span the period from 2006 to 2020, all taken with digital cameras.

Looking For Meanings

2026-10-18T00:00:00Z

(LLMs were used to help organize and translate this post)

A photography collection

Looking for Meanings is a collection of images that resisted being placed anywhere else in my photographic portfolio. Each one caught my attention for a reason — perhaps its colors, textures, composition, or a certain mystery that I couldn't quite explain. Yet none seemed to fit within the concepts explored by the other collections.

These are, in a way, orphan photographs. Images I like, that stayed with me, but for which I couldn't find a more precise category or a common thread strong enough to bring them together elsewhere. Rather than leave them aside, I decided they deserved a place of their own.

Perhaps the absence of a unifying concept is itself the point. These photographs share little beyond the fact that something in each of them made me stop and look. And maybe that's enough. Sometimes, the meaning of an image doesn't need to be defined; it can simply remain an open question, waiting to be discovered — or not.

The photographs span the period from 2009 to 2020, taken with various digital cameras, mobile phones, and medium and large format film cameras.

Light And Shadow

2026-10-18T00:00:00Z

(LLMs were used to help organize and translate this post)

A photography collection

Light and Shadow explores the ephemeral scenes created when light and darkness interact with the world around us. Shadows and beams of light become more than simple variations in illumination: they create shapes, objects, and patterns that seem to emerge from the scene itself.

What fascinates me about this approach is its fleeting nature. These shapes and patterns may appear or disappear in the next second, making the resulting scene a unique and unrepeatable moment. By blending tangible objects with these almost phantasmagorical entities, I try to construct new, abstract realities on top of the existing world — scenes that are both familiar and strangely unreal.

The photographs span the period from 2008 to 2021, taken with digital cameras, mobile phones, and medium and large format film cameras.

Beauty In The Beast

2026-10-18T00:00:00Z

(LLMs were used to help organize and translate this post)

A photography collection

Beauty in the Beast explores the aesthetics of decay in urban and industrial environments. Abandoned buildings, forgotten objects, and the gradual degradation of things are recurring subjects, offering a different perspective on places and objects that are often overlooked or considered ugly.

There's something fascinating about the way entropy reshapes our surroundings. As things deteriorate, layers emerge, colors change, textures develop, and unexpected patterns appear. What was once functional or carefully constructed slowly transforms into something else, often revealing a beauty of its own. This collection is about looking at that process of decay and finding beauty in its imperfections, irregularities, and transformations.

The photographs span the period from 2008 to 2020, and were taken with a variety of tools, from digital cameras and mobile phones to medium and large format film cameras.

Building a Personal Information System: Principles and Philosophy

2026-10-17T00:00:00Z

(LLMs were used to help organize and translate this post)

Introduction

Over the years, we accumulate an enormous amount of personal information. Identification documents, invoices, contracts, photographs, music, professional documents, certificates, notes, financial records, and countless other pieces of information become part of our personal history.

Much of this information has lasting value. Some of it is essential for everyday life; some may only become relevant years later. Some records document important events, while others preserve memories, knowledge, or work that would be difficult or impossible to recreate.

Yet this information is often scattered across devices, cloud services, applications, external drives, and physical documents. Its accessibility and preservation depend on a variety of systems and providers that we may not control.

I wanted a different approach: a system that allows me to consolidate my personal information, organize it in a comprehensible way, protect it, and preserve it for the long term.

I call it my personal information system (pIS).

This is not an attempt to build a personal cloud, reproduce every feature of a commercial productivity platform, or find a single application that does everything. It is an approach to managing personal information based on a few fundamental principles.

The most important of these is surprisingly simple: the information itself is the primary asset. Everything else exists to help me manage, access, and preserve it.

1. Start with the data

When thinking about a personal information system, it is tempting to start with the technology: which operating system to use, which applications to install, where to store the files, or which cloud provider to choose.

I prefer to start with the information.

What do I need to preserve? What might I need to access in the future? Which records are important to me, and how can I ensure that they remain available regardless of the technology I use?

My pIS covers several areas of my life:

Personal: identification documents, health history, education and training certificates, social security and financial documents, family information, and other personal records.
Assets: information about real estate, equipment invoices and manuals, and bank information.
Services: utility bills, contracts, and invoices for software and online services.
Professional: employment-related documents, projects, presentations, and other professional material.
Interests: information related to hobbies and subjects I follow, including IT, writing, architecture, genealogy, sports and travel.
Media: my photographs, videos, and music collection. This includes both artistic photography and everyday memories, as well as music digitized from my CD collection in lossless FLAC format.
Archive: old or no longer actively used files, including copies of information previously held by external services.
Scripts: administrative scripts and configuration files that help manage the system itself.

This collection is broader than a traditional document archive. It includes records, knowledge, memories, creative work, and the information needed to manage my digital environment.

These categories also illustrate an important distinction: the value of information is not necessarily related to how frequently I access it. A document that I consult once every five years may be much more important to preserve than a file I use every day.

The objective is therefore not merely to make current work convenient. It is to ensure that information remains available when it matters.

2. Why digital?

Physical documents and photographs have their own advantages. Paper does not require an operating system, and a printed photograph can remain perfectly understandable without any special equipment.

Nevertheless, I have chosen digital storage as the foundation of my pIS.

The main reason is not simply convenience. It is the ability to manage information systematically.

Digital information can be searched, indexed, copied, backed up, reorganized, and transferred between systems. Multiple copies can be maintained in different locations without losing the original information. Files can be converted into more suitable formats as technology evolves.

A digital collection also allows different kinds of information to coexist within a common organizational structure. A property can have its contracts, invoices, photographs, equipment manuals, and related correspondence stored together, without requiring a specialized application to understand the relationship.

This does not mean that every piece of information must originate in digital form. Paper documents can be scanned, and physical photographs can be digitized. Nor does it mean that the physical originals should always be discarded. Some documents deserve to be preserved in their original form.

The point is that the digital archive becomes the central place where I organize and maintain the information.

There is a trade-off. Digital information depends on storage media, software, and ongoing maintenance. Files can become corrupted, formats can become obsolete, and systems can fail. Digital storage is not inherently permanent.

But these risks can be managed through appropriate formats, backups, verification, and migration. More importantly, digital information can be replicated and moved systematically, making it possible to design a deliberate preservation strategy.

For me, this makes digital storage a more manageable foundation for a comprehensive personal archive.

3. Sovereignty: keeping control of my information

Personal information should remain personal.

This is the principle of sovereignty that guides my choices. I want to retain control over where my information resides, how it is accessed, which applications process it, and how it can be moved elsewhere.

Cloud services and commercial platforms can be convenient, but convenience often comes with dependencies. A provider can change its prices, restrict functionality, discontinue a product, alter its terms, or shut down entirely. Data may be stored in proprietary formats or become difficult to retrieve without the original application.

I do not want the continued existence of my personal archive to depend on the goodwill or commercial success of a third party.

This does not mean that I reject all external services. They can be useful, including for storing backup copies. What matters is the distinction between using a service and depending on it as the only place where information exists or can be accessed.

My authoritative archive remains under my control. External services, where used, are subordinate to that archive rather than its owners.

Sovereignty also means having an exit strategy. If a provider disappears, I should still have my information. If I decide to change applications or infrastructure, I should be able to do so without having to reconstruct my archive from scratch.

Ideally, I can leave a service behind without losing anything important.

4. Security and privacy

Control over information is meaningful only if that information is adequately protected.

My archive contains sensitive material: identification documents, financial records, health information, family details, and other information that should not be freely accessible to third parties.

Security and privacy are therefore fundamental requirements, not optional features to add later.

Security is about protecting information against unauthorized access, accidental loss, and other threats. Privacy is about limiting unnecessary exposure and ensuring that personal information is not routinely collected, analyzed, or exploited by services whose business models depend on it.

These concerns influence both the technology I choose and the services I avoid.

I prefer software that is simple to understand and control. I am cautious about applications that depend on opaque infrastructure, extensive third-party integrations, or unnecessary online accounts. Where information is entrusted to an external service, I favor approaches that minimize what the provider can access, including end-to-end encryption where appropriate.

I also try to minimize the number of places in which sensitive information is stored. Every additional copy, integration, or service can introduce another dependency or potential point of exposure.

Of course, no system can eliminate every risk. Security involves trade-offs, and a system that is theoretically secure but difficult to operate can introduce its own problems.

My objective is to build something that is secure by design, understandable, and sustainable to maintain.

5. Longevity and portability

A personal information system should outlive the devices and applications used to create it.

Some of the information I preserve today may still be relevant decades from now. By then, the applications I currently use may no longer exist, and the operating systems, storage devices, and online services available today may have changed completely.

This leads to two closely related principles: longevity and portability.

Longevity means preserving the ability to access and understand information over time. Portability means being able to move that information between applications, systems, and providers without excessive effort.

I try to achieve both by favoring ordinary files and established, documented formats. Wherever practical, I convert documents into standard formats rather than leaving them exclusively in application-specific ones.

The goal is to avoid unnecessary dependencies between the information and the software used to manipulate it.

A PDF document, a plain-text file, a standard image format, or a lossless audio file can generally be handled by multiple independent applications. This does not guarantee perpetual compatibility, but it reduces the risk that a particular vendor or application becomes the only way to access my data.

The same reasoning applies to organization. If the archive is structured using ordinary directories and files, it remains understandable without a dedicated database or a proprietary management application.

Longevity does not mean that nothing should ever change. Formats may need to be migrated, storage devices replaced, and copies verified. Preservation is an ongoing activity.

The important point is that these changes should be under my control rather than forced upon me by the disappearance of a product.

6. Simplicity and the filesystem

The organizational structure of my pIS follows the same philosophy.

I use a directory hierarchy to separate information into broad, meaningful categories. The structure reflects the different areas of my life rather than the applications that happen to handle the files.

This is a deliberate choice. I do not want the organization of my information to depend on a particular note-taking application, document manager, or personal knowledge management platform.

The filesystem is a familiar, general-purpose abstraction. It allows me to organize information using directories and files, access it with different tools, and move it between systems.

The main categories described earlier provide the first level of organization. Within them, directories can reflect more specific subjects, assets, projects, or contexts.

For example, documents related to a particular asset can be kept together, while photographs and music remain in the media collection. Old information can be moved to the archive without losing the ability to find it later.

This approach is not intended to impose a perfect taxonomy on every piece of information. Some documents belong to several contexts, and there will always be cases where the right place is debatable. The aim is to make the structure predictable and comprehensible, not to eliminate every ambiguity.

I also value the ability to inspect the archive without specialized tools. The directory hierarchy should communicate something about the contents, and the files should remain accessible through ordinary applications.

This reflects two related influences: the Unix philosophy of small tools that do their jobs well and can work together, and the suckless philosophy of minimizing unnecessary complexity.

I prefer a collection of understandable tools over a large, integrated system whose internal behavior I cannot easily inspect or control.

Simplicity, in this context, is not an aesthetic preference alone. It is a strategy for reducing dependencies, making maintenance easier, and improving the chances that the system will remain usable over time.

7. The system matters more than any particular tool

These principles lead to a broader conclusion: a personal information system should not be defined by its current technology stack.

The operating system, applications, storage devices, and services are implementation details. They matter, but they are not the essence of the system.

The essence is the information, its organization, and the ability to preserve and access it.

I should be able to replace a laptop, change an application, adopt a different operating system, or move to another storage provider without having to rethink the entire archive. Such changes may require work, but they should not threaten the information itself.

This is also why I distinguish between the authoritative archive and the other systems that interact with it. Information can arrive from a phone, pass through another device, or be copied to external storage, but these mechanisms should not create uncertainty about which collection is the primary one.

The system should have a clear source of truth, and its other components should support that source rather than compete with it.

That distinction helps keep the architecture understandable, regardless of how the implementation evolves.

Conclusion

My pIS is an attempt to take long-term responsibility for my personal information.

It starts with the conviction that information is more valuable than the particular devices and applications used to manage it. From there, the principles follow naturally: keep control of the archive, protect privacy, minimize unnecessary dependencies, use portable formats, organize information in a comprehensible structure, and favor simple tools that can be replaced when necessary.

None of these ideas is particularly revolutionary in isolation. What matters is applying them consistently to the information accumulated throughout a lifetime.

The result I want is not the most sophisticated personal information platform. It is a system that I understand, control, and can maintain — one that continues to serve me as technologies and circumstances change.

In the end, the real measure of success is not how clever the implementation is today. It is whether, many years from now, I can still find, open, understand, and use the information that matters to me.