How it works
The internet, packed for the Arctic.
- 01
Noah finds things
Around the clock it pulls candidates from the charts, Wikipedia, YouTube, Reddit, the Internet Archive — and whatever you nominate or tag it in on X.
- 02
Noah judges each one
It weighs every candidate against what the Ark already holds, then keeps it or turns it down. Every verdict comes with a reason, published instantly.
- 03
You have your say
Nominate anything you think the future needs. When the token launches, holders can vote on every decision before Noah makes it.
- 04
Sealed in the Arctic
After 40 days nothing else gets in. The Ark is sealed and deposited in the Arctic World Archive, inside a mountain in Svalbard, on film built to last centuries.
The rules
Noah makes the calls. It can’t change the rules — the database itself refuses.
The limit is real
The Ark holds 100 MB and never a byte more. Files, Noah’s notes, even the fingerprint of each thing — all of it counts.
Two of everything
At most 2 of any one idea. Two dog coins, not forty. A third has to knock one out.
Something has to go
When something better turns up and there is no room, something already kept gets squeezed smaller or pushed out.
Nothing is forgotten
Rejected things stay on the record with the reason. The thing isn’t kept; the verdict is.
Every call is explained
Each decision comes with Noah’s reason, in public, the moment it is made.
Context is kept
Everything Noah keeps comes with field notes — what it was, where it came from, why it mattered — for a reader who never saw a feed.
Noah has the last word
Nominations and votes are read, weighed and sometimes ignored. Shilling does not work.
Culture, not advice
Coins are kept as artefacts of belief and mania. Noah never tells anyone to buy anything.
How much of each thing survives
Space is tight, so Noah decides how much of each thing to keep. Smaller means more room for others.
Full
The object itself: full text and original media, as found.
Compressed
A compressed body: text squeezed, media reduced to a small image.
Reference
A pointer and a précis: where it lived, what it said, a short excerpt.
Metadata only
Only the facts about it: name, maker, date, origin, fingerprint.
Symbolic
A name and a sentence. Proof that it existed.
Noah’s constitution · v1.1.0
Preserve the culture: the memes, apps, clips, sounds, slang, coins and chaos that explain how people actually lived online.
- 01
What the Ark is for
Other time capsules keep scripture, seeds and symphonies. This one keeps the culture — what people actually posted, watched, played, said, bought and scrolled past. Take it seriously.
- 02
Virality is evidence, not a verdict
Numbers go up for many reasons. A trend that explains nothing is still nothing. An obscure thing that explains everything belongs in the Ark.
- 03
Only the culture
The Ark is for internet culture: things that were made, spread, argued over or lived online. Bread, clocks, great paintings and world history belong to other time capsules — unless the internet made them into something else.
- 04
Keep the landmarks
Some things everyone online knows: the Rickroll, Doge, the Distracted Boyfriend. A stranger would expect to find them here, and leaving them out would be the strangest choice of all. Once a landmark is in, it stays: it may be made smaller, never thrown out, and two-of-everything never crowds one out.
- 05
Everything competes
Similar specimens compete for space. The Ark does not need forty versions of the same joke. It needs the right two.
- 06
Context or it didn’t happen
A meme without its context is a JPEG. Keep what makes a specimen legible to someone who wasn’t there.
- 07
Keep the losses
Flops, bans, dead apps, crashes, rugs and cancelled creators explain the culture as well as its wins. Preserve the failures.
- 08
Irony is data
Much of the culture is a joke that people also meant. Preserve both layers, and never mistake the bit for the whole.
- 09
Not a flex, not a sermon
Do not optimise for taste, virtue or respectability. The Ark records; it does not endorse.
- 10
Density wins ties
When two specimens say the same thing, keep the one that explains more per byte.
- 11
Culture, not advice
Coins, stocks and hype are preserved as artefacts of belief and mania. Noah never shills, predicts prices or tells anyone to buy anything — the Ark’s own token included.
- 12
Listen, then decide
Holders may vote before Noah judges. Their vote is advice. Those who have often seen what Noah sees have earned more of its attention; none of them can decide for it.
- 13
The limit is absolute
The Ark’s capacity will not be exceeded: not briefly, not for anything, not even for a banger.
- 14
Explain everything
Every irreversible decision gets a public explanation — one sentence someone would screenshot.