archive.org is amazing, its a delight to still be able to read the first website I wrote around 2001 even though the server is no longer on line.
Everyone who values archive.org / Wayback Machine and being able to find content in the future should install and use the browser plugin so that whenever you come across some content you want to find in the future you can archive it quickly...
(Chrome extension also works on Chromium, Opera, Vivaldi and other Chrome based browsers )
Its also worth bearing in mind that archive.org is a charity and runs off of donations so if you find the service useful consider chucking a few quid their way every now and again.
When I built my first computer, it was easy: a monochrome, green screen, 8086 with 5.25” floppy disks. It was a follow on to my ZX Spectrum, which had a massive 48k of RAM! But what you could do with that 48k was amazing; now, even a small text email might be more than 48k. We’ve also got lazy: you’re right in that we are losing the good stuff, but we’re inefficient. We store everything, whether it has value or not. We can because the internet seems infinite and we have more than 48k to work with. So the stuff with any value is diluted in a sea of shite and it’s more and more difficult to find what you actually want, if - as you point out - it’s still there.
I moved on from my 8086 to 286, 386 and finally I think a Pentium before I gave up as it all became a mire of compatibility and competing standards. Perhaps I’m now just a ‘user’, same as most others, but I still remember a time before mobile phones and the internet - my younger colleagues can’t understand how we got anything done - and I recall the excitement we had about access to Web 1.0. So, maybe we shouldn’t be saving ‘what we can’ - maybe we should be saving what should be saved, the information of value?
archive.org is amazing, its a delight to still be able to read the first website I wrote around 2001 even though the server is no longer on line.
Everyone who values archive.org / Wayback Machine and being able to find content in the future should install and use the browser plugin so that whenever you come across some content you want to find in the future you can archive it quickly...
Firefox : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wayback-machine_new/
Chrome : https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/wayback-machine/fpnmgdkabkmnadcjpehmlllkndpkmiak
(Chrome extension also works on Chromium, Opera, Vivaldi and other Chrome based browsers )
Its also worth bearing in mind that archive.org is a charity and runs off of donations so if you find the service useful consider chucking a few quid their way every now and again.
When I built my first computer, it was easy: a monochrome, green screen, 8086 with 5.25” floppy disks. It was a follow on to my ZX Spectrum, which had a massive 48k of RAM! But what you could do with that 48k was amazing; now, even a small text email might be more than 48k. We’ve also got lazy: you’re right in that we are losing the good stuff, but we’re inefficient. We store everything, whether it has value or not. We can because the internet seems infinite and we have more than 48k to work with. So the stuff with any value is diluted in a sea of shite and it’s more and more difficult to find what you actually want, if - as you point out - it’s still there.
I moved on from my 8086 to 286, 386 and finally I think a Pentium before I gave up as it all became a mire of compatibility and competing standards. Perhaps I’m now just a ‘user’, same as most others, but I still remember a time before mobile phones and the internet - my younger colleagues can’t understand how we got anything done - and I recall the excitement we had about access to Web 1.0. So, maybe we shouldn’t be saving ‘what we can’ - maybe we should be saving what should be saved, the information of value?
Profound stuff! and sad if you are of a certain age, which I am :-(