TimothyMJones

I’m a botanist who has spent a good portion of my life hip-deep in the circumboreal muck, dodging snakes/alligators and picking off biting flies and tick, to document the natural world. I eventually realized that the biggest threat to my research wasn't the field conditions—it was software rot.

This 130KB "Digital Paratype" is my attempt at a 300-year software horizon. I initially ran the framework gauntlet—building versions in Bootstrap, Vue, React, and Angular—but I eventually scrapped them all. I realized that if I wanted this to be as durable as a physical herbarium specimen, it had to be a zero-dependency, self-contained object.

I’ve focused on "cementing" the data schema and ontology directly into the DOM using Vanilla JS. It’s a sovereign artifact: no build steps, no NPM, no server. I’m betting on the long-term stability of the browser to keep this data interactive and accessible long after the current framework ecosystems have shifted.

"Could you patent the sun?" — Jonas Salk