Internet History
The Many Ways Planned Obsolescence Is Sabotaging How We Preserve Internet History
We keep screwing over yesterday’s technology due to an intent focus on what we’re doing today. The problem of planned obsolescence is only getting worse.
Newly Surfaced Arcade Documents from the 1970s Predicted a Wild Future for Video Games
Atari executives thought we'd replace roller coasters with arcade machines.
The Rise and Demise of RSS
Before the internet was consolidated into centralized information silos, RSS imagined a better way to let users control their online personas.
These 'Ghost Characters' Don't Mean Anything But You Can Type Them Anyway
Forty years ago, a handful of fake Japanese characters ended up in Unicode by mistake.
A 15-Year-Old Has Saved an 80GB Archive of Apple Videos From YouTube’s Censors
A massive archive of files deleted by YouTube has been saved as a huge torrent file.
Amateur Porn Platform Eroshare Is Shutting Down
"Sadly, we are no longer able to offer this service."
AOL Is Mysteriously Shutting Down the 19-Year-Old Community That Inspired Wikipedia
Editors of DMOZ, a human-curated web directory say the "community is understandably devastated."
Early Efforts to Bring the News Online Changed the Shape of Media Forever
Newspapers said they wanted to protect the print product, but they were raring to go when it came to experimental online news approaches in the early 80s.
There's a New Operating System for the 39-Year-Old Apple II Computer
A fan-made update to ProDOS is the first since 1993 and is an undeniably heartwarming story.
The Surprising Impact the 1992 Presidential Election Had on the Modern Internet
The web wasn’t common in 1992, but presidential candidates notably took baby steps toward the internet that year—Ross Perot in a bigger way than most.
The Story of AllMusic, the Internet’s Largest, Most Influential Music Database
When AllMusic launched 25 years ago, it wasn't an obvious big data play. But it became one. Hidden in its millions of entries is music's collective history.
An Obscure Peter Gabriel Benefit Concert Helped Bring the Internet to the World
It took a while for the internet to turn into a major global force, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. (Peter Gabriel deserves at least some of the credit.)