It wasn’t long ago that we heard about the imminent demise of one of the net’s most infamous and venerable sites: Geocities. At the time, we could see the pendulum hanging from the rafters, but earlier this week it was set a-swinging and the site will die quietly and gallantly on October 26th. Of course, while the sites will no longer be accessible at Geocities itself, they will be preserved in our hearts — and on the Internet Archive, of course.
But merely being not deleted is hardly an honor fit for one the original pillars of the internet. Although we (and you) created a modest tribute, it deserves more, being one of the primary crucibles (or petri dishes, depending on your point of view) for internet culture. Enter Internet Archaeology, a site established in order to “explore, recover, archive and showcase the graphic artifacts found within earlier Internet Culture.” Artifacts is the perfect word, isn’t it? And as eye-searing as many of them are, there is a kind of transcendent quality in them to the sympathetic eye, and the site is dedicated to preserving that.
Spend a few minutes browsing through the already-impressive catalog of images (or catch highlights in the blog) and you begin to be rather a connoisseur in them, and to give a certain grudging regard. After all, making those 3D text animated GIFs was no cake walk in pre-millennium days.
There is, of course, a community aspect, where anyone can upload and share their internet oddities, provided they’re SFW and relatively small (it looks like). Entire pages are hosted as well, from outright craziness (my favorites) to sci-fi web rings to personal pages left for dead. These standouts represent the prehistoric relatives of our modern blogs and forums, so tread lightly on these, their graves. There are even original works recontextualizing (never thought I’d use that word without irony) the content in… well, in ways.
The creator, New Yorker Ryder Ripps, noted that the total space being used by Geocities pages was perhaps as little as 3TB. Of course, when you put that in GIF terms, that’s a huge amount of content.
While panning for gold in the twilight of Geocities is an important job, the intent of Internet Archaeology isn’t just to be a bucket for animated GIFs. The Internet Archive has already saved them from oblivion. The difference is that IA is curated in a serious way; the object is to capture the quintessence of the period by providing the most telling samples. If any readers have been to (and comprehended — the one does not follow the other) The Museum of Jurassic Technology, they might sense a similarity. Singly, each “exhibit,” as we may as well term these gifs, pages, and collections, is hardly worth a second look. But together, like the Wonder Twins or Planeteers, they are able to create something greater: a synthesis of the mindsets in this incredibly important, yet sadly garish and bizarre, period of internet history.
Oh, and for those of you following the contest:
RENDERED
Shhh, don’t remind people! :p
You guys should do this more often. Maybe even just for little stuff like thumb drives or something? Cheap way to get more page clicks and stuff! I’ve seen other websites do weekly giveaways, they started out with just maybe ten or so comments, then a week or two later there were hundreds of comments.
Personally, I think this is more fun than comment giveaways. Treasure hunting FTW.
I second that, Joshua. I have read more CrunchGear articles in the last 3 days than I had the last 3 months thanks to this contest. It’s not the only draw for me but it got my attention :)
How are we gonna get 7 words when there is only 6 days from October 9-October 14?
it started on the 8th
This is why I love the internet archive website: archive.org
I often check out geocities pages when i’m getting a little nostalgic…
Quit advertising the contest just type the word dont give reminders
I can’t believe geocities is closing! I remember my friends and I having a (very random) site on there when I was in school. But as I (or anyone I know) haven’t even visited geocities for at least a decade, maybe it’s time for it to say goodbye.
I remember my first foray into learning HTML so I could put up my own page on Geocities. I don’t remember my number but I was an early Homesteader in Hollywood/Hills. And yes, I really did think that Joker purple metallicy/shiny/wavy background with the bright yellow text on top really looked good and wasn’t eye-bleeding at all. Hey, it was 1995 and we LIKED it that way!
Internet Archaeology is brilliant! Kudos to Mr. Ripps for saving Geocities for future generations…
My first (and most hideous and most embarrassing) websites were at pre-Yahoo Geocities. But my “Baja” (the Geocities community) pages were inaccessible to me long, long ago. I think there was some not-too-well-published “don’t kill my Geocities pages” email or form required to be filled out.
Same thing happened with my Yahoo Briefcase account. They’re a service you really need to pay attention to if you’re using their products!
Yes, geo is closed, sigh, The question is what is next to be destroyed at Yahoo?
I realize most Yahoo members believe Yahoo is providing them a great service for
free and that they should be grateful for any crumbs Yahoo throws their way. But there
is another way of looking at it.
Millions of Yahoo members provide a tremendous resource for the online community. With the exception of only a
handful of Yahoo services (such as Yahoo Finance), pretty much all of Yahoo
depends on individuals who contribute their time with no compensation to build
up content for various Yahoo services. Examples are Y! Groups, Y! Answers, Y!
Buzz and much, much more.
Without this free labor Yahoo would not be able to sell advertising and would
cease to exist.
Is it too much to ask that Yahoo give something back to the community by retaining all content that people have contributed to the community
over many years? Lets face it, none of us are immortal and not all of us have
the energy to keep moving content around (or pay someone to do it for us).
How much valuable material was lost to mankind when Yahoo decided to wipe out
geocities?
geocities (which was not started, but taken over by Yahoo BTW) was the first
service allowing individuals to publish information over the internet “for
free”. The loss of the content there is equivalent in my mind the loss of many,
many archaeological digs.
One of the things that we, humans, do well is learn from our past mistakes.
However, we cannot do it by wiping out our past – we have to analyze it
and make it available to as many eyeballs as possible in order to reach the best
conclusions.
Yahoo and its shareholders have made lots of money over the years supposedly
providing a “free” service, but I for one, am very reluctant to continue
helping Yahoo build content that they simply dispose of when it suits them
without consulting with the community.