Process Overview

An executive overview of how you may choose to proceed.

1) Download the vCards

Starting with the Dec­lar­a­tion of Indepen­dence, down­load the ver­sion with emoji or with­out emoji.

2) Inspect the downloaded files

vCard files are simple text files. Lock the file so it can’t be changed by ac­ci­dent then open it in any text editor. You’ll see cap­ital­iz­ed words begin­ning each line, in­dicat­ing the various fields of the in­di­vid­ual vCards. There should be nothing sur­pris­ing or out of line with the vCard 3.0 standard (more: Wikipedia.org).

3) Import the vCard files

After satisfying yourself the cards seem fine and pose no threat, import them into your Contacts app how­ever it’s done. Spe­ci­fics vary from mobile to desk­top, etcetera.

4) Start reading or searching them

Once imported you can create a group com­pris­ing the im­port­ed cards. Select the group and using your app’s search feature, type some words to look for. For ex­ample, try “peace,” “war” and “invasion” to start with.

(See more example searches at the Internet Archive’s onion site or using DNS.)

What is this?

Two documents are rep­re­sent­ed above. The earl­ier Declaration of Independence and lat­ter Constitution of the United States of America.

Each has been careful­ly cut into logical pas­sages and made into its own set of vCards.

Declaration of Independence: 36 Cards.

Constitution: 117 Cards.

The first set has the U.S. Flag emoji as the first char­act­er for each vCard, as can be seen in the picture showing cards 66 to 73.

The set labeled “No Emoji” doesn’t use emoji, in­stead using “US” in its place.

One benefit of emoji, besides a quick ref­er­ence to the coun­try in focus, is the vCards sort out of the way of your reg­u­lar con­tacts (people & organizations).

In both cases: “With Emoji” & “No Emoji” each vCard name is: the ab­brev­iat­ed name of the doc­ument, the serial num­ber of its or­der, the let­ter “O” for “Original” and a section num­ber if it begins a new section.

The goal being to pack as much use­ful in­forma­tion into as nar­row-width as pos­sible for the lowest common denominator mobile de­vices.

This can be seen in the screen­shot show­ing the U.S. Constitution sections 2.3 to 3.3, which correspond to cards 66 to 73.

Until this site can be fleshed out more, and pre­vious in­for­ma­tion re­stored, please see what FoundingDocuments.org used to look like at the Internet Archive using DNS or their tor onion site. For now they’re the best place for in­for­ma­tion not yet replicated here. 

More to follow …