Culture: Museum
Online Museum of Internet History   (+5)  [vote for, against]
Place on the web to see what old web pages and software (among other things) used to look like.

I would glady make a copy of Netscape 0.98 for their collection.

In addition you could have special exhibits like "Current Day Content Rot" and explain why this (see below) PC Magazine web page is still up and active even thought it hasn't been updated in 15 months. Lecturers could discuss what life was like before Internet ubiquity and the URLs became plastered all over everything. Just an idea...
-- dgeiser13, Sep 27 2000

PC Magazine Online: First Looks http://www.zdnet.co...ooks/firstlooks.htm
This site was last updated 6/8/99. [dgeiser13, Sep 27 2000, last modified Oct 21 2004]

(?) idea-a-day: vintage web site museum http://www.idea-a-d...isplayDate=17/09/00
Similar idea. [jutta, Sep 27 2000]

(?) Yahoo! - December 31, 1994 http://web.bilkent.edu.tr/History/yahoo/
What Yahoo! looked like way back when... [dgeiser13, Sep 27 2000, last modified Oct 21 2004]

(?) History of the Internet http://www.isoc.org...et/History/HIT.html
Interesting. 1989: Number of hosts exceeds 100,000 [hippo, Sep 27 2000, last modified Oct 21 2004]

Dgeiser, it looks like someone heard you. That PC Magazine page was updated today.

<net.rummage> Hey, that browser emulator thing is cool....My website looks vile, though, being mostly tables...
-- StarChaser, Jul 09 2001


This would be sweet as a big collective thing (if you want to find a host and start it up, dgeiser13), but almost as good and entirely practical on the level of individual websites. Of course with a large historical website, you could do things like taking snapshots of popular and otherwise valuable websites and freezing them in time (and on CDs...)
-- jabbers, Aug 21 2001


If this is the age of information, why do I feel less informed than I did in 1991? And why am I being persuaded to help build monuments to information as public good? And why do so many people fear public as information good? People cherish their privacy, but mine never did anything for me.
-- LoriZ, Aug 22 2001


Ever had someone fill out a credit card application in your name and run up huge bills on you?
-- StarChaser, Aug 25 2001


Privacy and security are different things. It's possible to have a well-protected identity (so that nobody can masquerade as you) but no privacy (everyone can see what you do).

Unfortunately, because today's security protocols are mostly predicated on the obscurity of personal information (your mother's maiden name, etc), it's easy to confuse the two.
-- egnor, Aug 25 2001



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