36 votes

Why there's so little left of the early internet.

13 comments

  1. [7]
    s-sea
    Link
    What strikes me as well is how much of the internet that even though we have some archives, the vast majority has been lost - chat rooms, for instance. We have the bare minimum, the chatboxes or...

    What strikes me as well is how much of the internet that even though we have some archives, the vast majority has been lost - chat rooms, for instance. We have the bare minimum, the chatboxes or whatever, but not the actual communications that these people had had.

    Add to that what has already been lost - like I was born in '00 and how much internet have I already missed/ has disappeared? - it's practically unfathomable the amount of human interaction that's dissipated into the aether.

    15 votes
    1. NaraVara
      Link Parent
      Most of that stuff is just replacing conversation in evanescent formats anyway. It's a new thing this idea that idle chatter and day to day exchange should, or even could, be preserved for...

      Most of that stuff is just replacing conversation in evanescent formats anyway. It's a new thing this idea that idle chatter and day to day exchange should, or even could, be preserved for posterity. Chats with strangers at a bar, first dates, and even the majority of letters people wrote to each other over time were generally disposed of when no longer useful.

      Keeping things for later used to be an active choice you would make. You had to decide a letter was worth keeping or commit to memory a particularly edifying conversation. Sure some stuff of value may have been lost by losing a lot of the early internet but, to be honest, most of it was just detritus. Since there are a lot of security and privacy concerns involved in recording and storing stuff forever, maybe it would be better to return to a norm of people having to actively decide whether something deserves to be archived and let the rest fade away with time.

      Like, I'll never get the old IRC chat logs back, but we still have bash.org.

      16 votes
    2. [2]
      Adys
      Link Parent
      Have a thing :) http://infobot.rikers.org/ Some IRC logs going back 20 years. Many of these channels are still active, and logged to infobot.

      Have a thing :)
      http://infobot.rikers.org/

      Some IRC logs going back 20 years. Many of these channels are still active, and logged to infobot.

      10 votes
      1. cfabbro
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        While not nearly as comprehensive, since it's basically a highlight reel (likely with some embellishments), there is also bash.org too. It's where the "hunter2" password meme originally came from.

        While not nearly as comprehensive, since it's basically a highlight reel (likely with some embellishments), there is also bash.org too. It's where the "hunter2" password meme originally came from.

    3. Gaywallet
      Link Parent
      Why do you want a record of this? Most human to human interaction in the history of the world has not been recorded. I'm very much not a huge privacy guy, but this seems quite intrusive to be...

      chat rooms, for instance.

      Why do you want a record of this? Most human to human interaction in the history of the world has not been recorded. I'm very much not a huge privacy guy, but this seems quite intrusive to be asking for.

      5 votes
    4. Adam_Black_Arts
      Link Parent
      I miss all the forums I used to be active in between 1998 and 2008, before everyone moved to FB. TONS of human interaction in gajillions of different places, and most of it seems to be gone. What...

      I miss all the forums I used to be active in between 1998 and 2008, before everyone moved to FB. TONS of human interaction in gajillions of different places, and most of it seems to be gone.

      What also bothers me is how little video of the previous century is available online in anything greater than 240p.

      4 votes
    5. alyaza
      Link Parent
      such is the inevitability of internet hosting. the internet has made it exceptionally easy to host obscene amounts of data that we could never dream of storing on paper in a way that is...

      What strikes me as well is how much of the internet that even though we have some archives, the vast majority has been lost - chat rooms, for instance. We have the bare minimum, the chatboxes or whatever, but not the actual communications that these people had had.

      such is the inevitability of internet hosting. the internet has made it exceptionally easy to host obscene amounts of data that we could never dream of storing on paper in a way that is manageable, but has also made it exceptionally easy to lose all of that data at the same time because of the fickle nature of the hosting that allows us to do so in the first place. this is always, most likely, going to be a problem with the internet, because in some ways it's like the cosmos: there is simply so much going on that there are never going to be nearly enough eyes to catch everything, and therefore you can really only hope that someone else is catching the broad strokes while other people undertake laborious archiving of the certain windows people dedicate themselves to.

  2. [2]
    Comment deleted by author
    Link
    1. Silbern
      Link Parent
      I registered the very next day! :D it's only been a few weeks and I've already forgotten we used to have a log in page, haha.

      I registered the very next day! :D it's only been a few weeks and I've already forgotten we used to have a log in page, haha.

      1 vote
  3. [3]
    patience_limited
    Link
    Well, I was pleased to discover that an old friend, who was responsible for the first WWW-connected hot tub, still had some site info archived:...

    Well, I was pleased to discover that an old friend, who was responsible for the first WWW-connected hot tub, still had some site info archived: https://web.archive.org/web/19961220232306/http://hamjudo.com/.

    Not that this is epoch-making lost data, but I'm keeping my contributions to archive.org going.

    Archive Team project for Google+ archiving only managed 98% of content before shutdown.

    The Geocities and MySpace disasters show just how fragile our modern "history" really is.

    4 votes
    1. [2]
      EightRoundsRapid
      Link Parent
      I can see academics in the future pulling their hair out, and much research on lost history being done. The field of "digital archaeology" will probably be a thriving one in a few decades time.

      I can see academics in the future pulling their hair out, and much research on lost history being done. The field of "digital archaeology" will probably be a thriving one in a few decades time.

      5 votes
      1. DonQuixote
        Link Parent
        "When All The Laughter Dies In Sorrow" - Chicago When all the laughter dies in sorrow And the tears have risen to a flood When all the wars have found a cause In human wisdom and in blood Do you...

        "When All The Laughter Dies In Sorrow" - Chicago

        When all the laughter dies in sorrow
        And the tears have risen to a flood
        When all the wars have found a cause
        In human wisdom and in blood
        Do you think they'll cry in sadness
        Do you think the eye will blink
        Do you think they'll curse the madness
        Do you even think they'll think

        When all the great galactic systems
        Sigh to a frozen halt in space
        Do you think there will be some remnant
        Of beauty of the human race
        Do you think there will be a vestige
        Or a sniffle or a cosmic tear
        Do you think a greater thinking thing
        Will give a damn that man was here

        1 vote
  4. beowulfey
    Link
    This is always a fun discussion so I'll throw in my favorite piece of the early web: the first webcamera on the internet. The Trojan Room Coffee Pot

    This is always a fun discussion so I'll throw in my favorite piece of the early web: the first webcamera on the internet. The Trojan Room Coffee Pot

    3 votes
  5. nothis
    Link
    I always wondered about the legality of the web archive. It flat out copies websites. Not just linking to them or whatever, it's perfect copies of the full content. Is there some specific...

    I always wondered about the legality of the web archive. It flat out copies websites. Not just linking to them or whatever, it's perfect copies of the full content. Is there some specific exemption to copyright?