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A blank scroll since the beginning
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One of the most remarkable aspects of websites is they
have no history. Most are updated periodically, and most are redesigned
periodically, given some sort of stylish "facelift" to somehow
disguise all the old content and make it all look new again.
But what did it look like 5 years ago, if it existed
five years ago? For most website owners, that would be a good question
since no one seems to archive their own website. The old one is shed like
a snake's skin and the new larger one emerges.
But what does it say about a medium where there is no
past, no history, no memory?
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But wait: there is a rather small archive of about
150 billion pages at The
Wayback Machine! Put in a domain name and you'll have dozens of versions
to choose from, going back to 1996. One drawback is that many of the images
are broken, due to changing directory locations over time on any given website.
Credit MIT grad Brewster Kahle as the digital librarian behind The Wayback
Machine.
We've spent hours looking up old content and the way things
looked back in the 640x480 pixel days. How quaint today's 1600x1200 pixel screens
will seem 10 years from now.
-Tim Corwin
May 2009
