Frozen History
Now, I could have sworn that I wrote an entry about the closing of GeoCities, because I distinctly remember doing it....
Oh nevermind, that was done a lot further back than I thought it was, no wonder I couldn't find it. Since I Do It Live, I will leave my mistake there.
Anyway, as of Monday, GeoCities is now completely closed. Although it's a far shot from the internet being relieved by horrible website designs, the historical significance of one of the oldest internet hosts being taken offline is pretty immense, and a lot of the internet has been now removed from circulation, removing it from sight, removing it from mind, and removing it from existence.
That is, if not for efforts to preserve it, of course. I've talked of the Internet Archive before, which has set up a special section dedicated to the GeoCities archive specifically. However, they weren't the only people this time to hold up the idea of a New Alexandria. A small group threw together a project called Reocities, to download as much of the GeoCities servers as possible, and rehost them. They have a nice detailed account of how they did it, too, which is a pretty cool read for the technological aspect of the feat.
"Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make," so said Douglas Adams. And because of that, the importance of preserving as much as we can about the reality of things is paramount, so that we can prove things as they really were, instead of just rumor and hearsay. Thanks to the Archive, as always, and thanks to Reocities, for seeing the need to preserve a major part of the Internet's history.
Date posted: 29 October, 2009 Tags: internet new_alexandria website_design
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