About Cantor's Archive

Cantor's Archive is an official directory of stories published in Cantor's Paradise, a community-driven publication of math-, science- and technology-related essays.

Why Cantor's Archive?

Cantor's Archive includes stories published in Cantor's Paradise which are older than 1 years old.

The Story

Medium ceased supporting publications in mid-2021. Medium's founder and CEO Ev Williams resigned from the company a year later, in mid-2022. To quote TechCrunch, "What happens now isn’t clear, though skeptics have long wondered if Medium would still be up and running if not for Williams".

Medium is an 10+ year old start-up company that has raised more than $163 million from angel investors, venture capitalists and private equity. The company has yet to make a profit. In venture capital terms, one might describe the company as one that is "living dead".

At the time Cantor's Paradise was founded, Medium was still investing in building new features and supporting new publications. However, following the success of Substack, Medium in mid-2021 abandoned Cantor's Paradise and other user-driven publications.

Cantor's Archive is a strategy aimed at ensuring that the Cantor's Paradise community survives regardless of what happens to Medium going forward.

Rights

Authors retain the rights to their stories in Cantor's Archive (as in CP).

Message to Authors

Authors of stories included in Cantor's Archive are encouraged to reach out via email to set up and/or update their Cantor's Archive user profile.

Advertising

Cantor's Paradise is hosted on Medium, a platform financed through user subscriptions.

Cantor's Archive, however, is hosted on Ghost, an open source blogging platform. Unlike Medium, Ghost is paid service which charges for features such as hosting, user management, backups, integrations and more. We chose Ghost for Cantor's Archive because it enables:

  1. Future-proofing. Unlike Medium, Ghost allows publications to export and back-up stories, comments and user profiles.
  2. New functionality. Unlike Medium, Ghost features integrations with other popular services, including automations via Zapier/IFTTT, social networks and more.
  3. Dynamic Business Model. Unlike Medium, Ghost allows publications to set up their own business model, depending on their needs. In the future, should Medium cease to exist, writers will be able to continue monetising their stories via Cantor's Archive.