I like the concept of "Digital Heritage" as they call it.
I think preserving digital heritage may become an important issue in the next few years. As the world begins to recognize the historic legacy of the web, it may someday become as important as preserving physical historical landmarks.
Its time to accept that the internet may be the greatest legacy 21st century civilization leaves behind. It likely isn't going anywhere, and is the most complete archive of our lives, that may live on for generations after we're dead.
For all we know, the things we type here could be preserved longer than the pyramids of giza should someone make sure to back it up regularly. I hope that someone does.
Charles Stross has an excellent novel, "Glasshouse", a major plot point of which is that due to shoddy digital preservation practices, far-future historians know virtually nothing about ≈1950 through ≈2050 or so. What little they know is pieced together from fragmentary bits and pieces of evidence, with results that are at turns hilarious and horrifying when "put into practice" by historical re-enactors. Kind of reminded me of David Macauly's "Motel of the Mysteries" in some ways.
Jason Scott is a pretty cool dude; random story:
He was doing the JetBlue unlimited month of travel and showed up in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago to talk at CMU. He was giving a talk at Seton Hill college the next day (about 45 mins away), and posted on twitter looking for a ride. A friend of mine forwarded the tweet to me, and I got in touch with Jason and ended up giving him a ride the next day. I had very little clue who he was before I met him, but he gave me a copy of Get Lamp and some good discussion in return.
I'm actually sad that I didn't put my first website on geocities now! I had my own web hosting from my ISP, so I had a fabulously easy to remember url of "homepages.tig.com.au/~liedra" which was lost as soon as my family upgraded to a cable connection from dialup. And no, archive.org didn't manage to catch it :( I think it had a page devoted to Nick Cave and some terrible poetry! Go go websites of a 17 year old! :)
The interesting thing was that at the time my friends and I (who had ISP-based homepages) looked down on Geocities because it was "lame" comparatively. Now I'm sad that I don't have any records of that original page (possibly on an ancient CD-R though? but most of those early ones have degraded now...)
My first pages were on my ISP which offered a subdomain! I paid £2 a month extra (on top of call charges) for the privelige. My friends thought I was crazy but I showed them when that very same subdomain impressed someone enough to give me a web dev job ("You have a subdomain? Impressive").
I also looked down on geocities/angelfire sites and I still think I got the better deal out of it - my first stuff was too embarrassing to live on for eternity in the depths of a torrent.
The early web is a treasure trove of an interesting time in history. It was the first time average people could just write public documents to express themselves.
Naturally the pages were terrible, covered in things that look good the first time you see it, pointless opinions and personal shrines to obscure relics of pop-culture.
The web is still the same, but more everyday. Companies work day and night to have a web presence, and "using the internet" is synonymous with replying to status and 'liking' things.
Geocities, AOL Homepages, and tripod are landmarks of the first time in history someone could just make a page about themselves, or something they liked and _anyone_ could see it. It was society making paintings on caves.
Unfortunately, these sites don't produce revenue, and never will, so from a corporate point of view, they are worthless.
The early era of the web is like trying to find rare music. Of course there is a modern site, a torrent, or some convenient way to find most of what you want. What you find is at best, the same thing everyone else finds. The old web is full of non-technical people earnestly trying to make something, not a startup, not to sell a book, just trying to put something together which is largely lost in the ease of "List your favorite bands"
Not that it was better, or more insightful, simply that it is a huge body of primitive work that is unlikely to be recreated. These things should be stored, if for no other reason than we can see the bloviated opinions of mensans, the C-style poetry of 90's sysadmins, or just the insane ramblings of people who think like Gene Ray, but don't have the perseverence to keep up timecube.
The sites are a labor of love, no matter the revenue, and it annoys me to no end that AOL or Yahoo has the power to simply delete these old sites because they don't make business sense, to businesses that don't even know what they are doing.
Anyway, as someone who mirrored a few old HomePages and Geocities sites, and backs up pieces of the old internet whenever I can find them, this is a breath of fresh air.
Hey, everyone, Jason Scott (the textfiles.com guy) here.
Just wanted to address that reocities.com has even more than I do, and more than what's in the torrent. If you want to browse geocities, like ye old days, go visit reocities. This data release is never meant to be "all of geocities" just "a lot of geocities" (and all I have).
they don't work, the second you start getting any serious traffic you get a warning. I had a video(flash movie) that got popular, and they sent me a warning after only 2 gigs of bandwidth.
Granted those 2 gigs were used up in something like 5 minutes, but never the less..you'd think they'd give you a little more to play with.
I remember creating my first site on geocities. A southpark fan site with links to download episodes (linked to another site hosting the of course). That obviously became the most popular feature. Think will have to get the torrent or at least part of it for a trip down memory lane. It is the digital equvilent of the 80's haircut
I'd love to be able to search those contents. I'm pretty sure I had a few Geocities sites, but I'm not going to download a terabyte to see if it's in there.
I imagine at least somebody will download to a server and host them all there. Might grab a new 1TB drive into one of my servers and do it if I'm bored enough...
I remember starting out in Geocities and then in Angelfire. Those where the days when you had to submit your site to the Yahoo directories :D I actually made money selling ads from Commission Junction back then. It wasn't much but it felt great.
I can't for the life of me remember what I put out on geocities but it was probably something to do with Star Wars. I think my username back then was Fett82. Good times...
For anyone in Australia, it would be cheaper to pay them to put the data on a HDD, wrap it in bacon and hand deliver it - rather than download the torrent.
[+] [-] mhansen|15 years ago|reply
and the discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=903567
Does this torrent contain the fruits of the collaboration planed in that discussion?
[+] [-] rwhitman|15 years ago|reply
I think preserving digital heritage may become an important issue in the next few years. As the world begins to recognize the historic legacy of the web, it may someday become as important as preserving physical historical landmarks.
Its time to accept that the internet may be the greatest legacy 21st century civilization leaves behind. It likely isn't going anywhere, and is the most complete archive of our lives, that may live on for generations after we're dead.
For all we know, the things we type here could be preserved longer than the pyramids of giza should someone make sure to back it up regularly. I hope that someone does.
[+] [-] stevenbedrick|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbail|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naz|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tibbon|15 years ago|reply
I for one will make this one torrent that I will perpetually seed until my ISP tries to stop me.
[+] [-] askedrelic|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cnlwsu|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] liedra|15 years ago|reply
The interesting thing was that at the time my friends and I (who had ISP-based homepages) looked down on Geocities because it was "lame" comparatively. Now I'm sad that I don't have any records of that original page (possibly on an ancient CD-R though? but most of those early ones have degraded now...)
[+] [-] kingofspain|15 years ago|reply
I also looked down on geocities/angelfire sites and I still think I got the better deal out of it - my first stuff was too embarrassing to live on for eternity in the depths of a torrent.
[+] [-] scrame|15 years ago|reply
The early web is a treasure trove of an interesting time in history. It was the first time average people could just write public documents to express themselves.
Naturally the pages were terrible, covered in things that look good the first time you see it, pointless opinions and personal shrines to obscure relics of pop-culture.
The web is still the same, but more everyday. Companies work day and night to have a web presence, and "using the internet" is synonymous with replying to status and 'liking' things.
Geocities, AOL Homepages, and tripod are landmarks of the first time in history someone could just make a page about themselves, or something they liked and _anyone_ could see it. It was society making paintings on caves.
Unfortunately, these sites don't produce revenue, and never will, so from a corporate point of view, they are worthless.
The early era of the web is like trying to find rare music. Of course there is a modern site, a torrent, or some convenient way to find most of what you want. What you find is at best, the same thing everyone else finds. The old web is full of non-technical people earnestly trying to make something, not a startup, not to sell a book, just trying to put something together which is largely lost in the ease of "List your favorite bands"
Not that it was better, or more insightful, simply that it is a huge body of primitive work that is unlikely to be recreated. These things should be stored, if for no other reason than we can see the bloviated opinions of mensans, the C-style poetry of 90's sysadmins, or just the insane ramblings of people who think like Gene Ray, but don't have the perseverence to keep up timecube.
The sites are a labor of love, no matter the revenue, and it annoys me to no end that AOL or Yahoo has the power to simply delete these old sites because they don't make business sense, to businesses that don't even know what they are doing.
Anyway, as someone who mirrored a few old HomePages and Geocities sites, and backs up pieces of the old internet whenever I can find them, this is a breath of fresh air.
[+] [-] textfiles|15 years ago|reply
Just wanted to address that reocities.com has even more than I do, and more than what's in the torrent. If you want to browse geocities, like ye old days, go visit reocities. This data release is never meant to be "all of geocities" just "a lot of geocities" (and all I have).
I am ALL for a 2.0 from jacquesm. :)
[+] [-] mhd|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roadnottaken|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jach|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vaksel|15 years ago|reply
Granted those 2 gigs were used up in something like 5 minutes, but never the less..you'd think they'd give you a little more to play with.
[+] [-] rakkhi|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corin_|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sp332|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wenbert|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] micheljansen|15 years ago|reply
Now if only Yahoo donated the geocities.com domain to whoever has the guts to keep this archive online...
[+] [-] mrschwabe|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbillingsley|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dramatize|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noonespecial|15 years ago|reply
How would you like your bacon cooked?
[+] [-] mahmud|15 years ago|reply
That was in Sydney though, last year.
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] steve19|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sz|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TamDenholm|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Luyt|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mrcurious|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]