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Digital Archaeology Show Reveals 'Lost' Web Sites

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the find-the-buried-treasure dept.

Stoobalou writes "The world's first ever 'archaeological dig' of the internet is set to begin this week in London's über-trendy Shoreditch. The exhibition, entitled Digital Archaeology, kicks off today to mark the 20th anniversary of the first stirrings of the world wide web. According to its organisers, valuable evidence from the interweb's early days is at risk of being lost forever. Digital Archaeology is an attempt to kick-start a wider attempt to archive the web in Britain's first 'digital archive'."

21 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Perfect tool found for this project! by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Funny

    When they started the dig, the scientists were amazed to see the old now defunct web has buried in it the perfect tool to do the digging! Gophers!

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:Perfect tool found for this project! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      When they started the dig, the scientists were amazed to see the old now defunct web has buried in it the perfect tool to do the digging! Gophers!

      Oh how I miss Gopher, Archie, and Veronica and gang. The modern-day World Wide Web is basically commerce-oriented with actual information content on a steady decline. Sad.

      Forget Web 2.0. Let's move to Web 3.0 and a return to the original purpose of the Internet and World Wide Web, namely information-sharing and collaboration for the enrichment (betterment) of society through knowldge and its applications to solving problems.

    2. Re:Perfect tool found for this project! by datapharmer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yay - text! I was quite thrilled with the technology at the time. Gopher and BBS systems actually made a 1200 baud modem seem useful. For you youngsters that don't know what we're talking about see here. Now get off my lawn.

      --
      Get a web developer
    3. Re:Perfect tool found for this project! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Why were there requests for help in Spanish in a French speaking country?

    4. Re:Perfect tool found for this project! by mcgrew · · Score: 4, Insightful

      (50 years ago). Oh how I miss Radio. The modern-day television is basically commerce-oriented, while radio has devolved into a bunch of pop music.
      (80 years ago). Oh how I miss Books. The modern-day radio is basically commerce-oriented, while books provided ad-free entertainment.
      (100 years ago). Oh how I miss Live pianos/bands. The modern-day grammophone is basically commerce-oriented with actual talent on a steady decline - replaced with pop stars.

      The problem with your analogy is that we still have radios, books, and live bands, but the internet we had ten and more years ago is long gone. It's all commercials now. Back in the nineties people were bitching about the few pages that had single banner ads.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    5. Re:Perfect tool found for this project! by commodore64_love · · Score: 3, Insightful

      >>>It's all commercials now.

      As is typical with these kinds of statements ("all" "nothing left") it is false. It would be more accurate to say the web "almost" all gone, but there are still lots of websites that resemble the early web (no or few ads). There's even a few gopher sites around, and of course the pure-text Usenet which dates back to the 80s.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    6. Re:Perfect tool found for this project! by FoolishOwl · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Indeed. I also often think of the importance of anti-war college students in the US who were chatting directly with Serbian college students during that war, and the potential long-term importance of that.

      While the crassly commercial applications of the Internet have grown exponentially, the projects for the commonweal that have been around since the beginning have steadily grown. It struck me that yesterday at work, I was listening to a presentation on a proprietary search engine; enterprise clients use it to store and index tens or hundreds of millions of documents. Wikipedia currently claims a bit under 3.5 million articles in English.

      So, commercial enterprises are storing volumes of data that (apparently) dwarf Wikipedia. Yet how many people refer to Wikipedia daily? The steady, if slower, growth of a project such as Wikipedia has a much greater social impact than those larger, better-finance corporate enterprise projects.

    7. Re:Perfect tool found for this project! by Raenex · · Score: 2, Insightful

      the internet we had ten and more years ago is long gone

      I got started on the Net a year before Eternal September, in 1992, and I used to think how terrible it was that the masses would "ruin" it. Yet every year the Net just keeps on getting better and better, because there's more and more information at my fingertips.

  2. Jason Scott by Zerth · · Score: 5, Interesting

    of textfiles.com is more of a "digital archeologist" than this wanker, because he might have all that stuff you posted to BBSs back in the 70s/80s.

    Plus, he's got an awesome speech on the history of electronic porn, going back to tickertape machines and ham radio(think about that).

    http://laughingsquid.com/jason-scott-on-the-atomic-level-of-porn-at-arse-elektronika-2009/

  3. Re:Post of the year! by biryokumaru · · Score: 4, Informative

    Right, because no one's ever considered doing this before. Especially not in the UK!

    --
    When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
  4. Archaeology by The+Living+Fractal · · Score: 3, Funny

    valuable evidence from the interweb's early days

    What, you mean high contrast animated gif backgrounds on barely-visible text?

    It's like an Archaeologist is having a conversation with a layman:
    Archaeologist: You see this dirt?
    Layman: Yep, that's nice dirt, what's so special about it?
    Archaeologist: This dirt is FOUR BILLION years old!
    Layman: Wow, that's pretty old! So how does that make it different than this dirt I'm standing on?
    Archaeologist: Well, for one, if you were to grow marijuana with it, you'd be smoking some ancient shit, man.
    Layman: *just stares*
    Archaeologist: Seriously, it's OLD!
    Layman: I'm sure.


    Hmm. I think I need my morning coffee.

    --
    I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
  5. Re:Prediction by whitehaint · · Score: 4, Funny

    The web will be one big flash site using those neato web 2.0 buttons, and popups all over the place so you know where to get your hover car and penis pills. The future is bright indeed!

  6. Digiboard predated the Internet Archive's Wayback by Rick+Richardson · · Score: 4, Informative

    Digiboard, Inc. website (http://www.dgii.com) predated the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.  When I started the website, only ~200 sites existed.

  7. finds? by bhcompy · · Score: 2, Funny

    Smithsonian Digital Archeology Museum exhibits: Hello My Future Girlfriend Mahir All Your Base Supergreg

  8. Awesome exhibit! by Combatso · · Score: 2, Funny

    I can't wait to visit the "punch the monkey and win!" exhibit.

  9. Re:Prediction by tlhIngan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well, if the semantic web starts off, you won't need websites anymore - because you'd just ask your favourite software agent "I want to buy a Brand X cheap t-shirt", press a button and it'll scour the machine-readable servers on the internet and purchase it for you automatically.

    I don't see this happening in 5 years though - people are too lazy.

    YOu have to admit, though, that the change is happening. But not on the PC, but smartphone. People are getting apps that are frontends to websites - eBay, Facebook, Craigslist, NY Times etc. And there's plenty of shopping apps too - from those that read barcodes and find you the online deals to others that dig out reviews and such. And while they won't buy it for you automatically, they'll link you to a buy-it-now button.

    It's happening because people are lazy - you're in a store, why not use your phone to find out if it's a deal, get reviews and other things, right there, right now. Rather than note it down, go home, and spend time on the computer looking it up.

    In fact, I think some people consider it to be a huge threat to the open internet when everyone's all cowered away tapping on their smartphones using apps rather than surfing using well-known protocols and standards. And those apps may or may not be using standard protocols. Segmenting the web away, slowly.

  10. Re:Smells a bit like a crackpot. by DigiShaman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Apple app that look and feels like websites with a back-end cloud hosting content. Think AOL hell all over again. It' where the old become the new.

    Ya ya, flamebait and all that... Someones gotta throw chum in the water from time to time. :)

    --
    Life is not for the lazy.
  11. Re:I'm sceptical by delinear · · Score: 2, Funny

    Haha, seriously? What's wrong with a VM running an old OS+browser combo. Are the spinning, flaming skull gifs animating too quickly on modern hardware?

  12. Re:I'm sceptical by TaoPhoenix · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yes.

    http://anselme.homestead.com/AFPHAITI.html

    --
    My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
  13. Re:Prediction by GameboyRMH · · Score: 2, Insightful

    In fact, I think some people consider it to be a huge threat to the open internet when everyone's all cowered away tapping on their smartphones using apps rather than surfing using well-known protocols and standards. And those apps may or may not be using standard protocols. Segmenting the web away, slowly.

    100% agree, it's very bad news, but I think if the iPhone/iPad were to lose popularity the trend would stop. Don't forget these apps were mostly made to work around the iPhone's crippled browsing experience. If another phone with a full-featured browser becomes the most popular (especially if it also has true multitasking with RSS reader widgets, etc) I think the "client app" trend will die off.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  14. Shoreditch is *not* uber-trendy by Tomsk70 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Spoken as someone that worked in Whitechapel for ten years, it's somewhere you move away from, not to. Trust me on this, the only people that think it's trendy to live somewhere like that are journalists