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.



Continue Reading: Internet Archaeology: In Which The Internet’s Sordid Past Is Preserved And Curated

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