Digging the Internet
When "surfing" the "world wide web" first became a way to spend a free moment (or ten), I used to love the serendipity of it all. Follow stray links, and you could end up anywhere. It was all kind of like driving in the country without a whole lot of street signs.
Now, while there is a lot more information available, and it's so well-indexed by Google and the other search engines that even little oddball sites have way pointers, I rarely find myself just wandering around without a map.
The other day, though, I was researching a topic for work and actually ended up in one of those "I can't believe I found this" situations. I actually had one of those moments of realizing how big the world is, and how many little worlds are contained within it, ones that go on quietly in their own little orbit, important that those who occupy them, but not even noticed by the rest of us.
What I found was a site aggregator called "The Armory." Relating to a term associated with online gaming, The Armory is a collection of "Geek House" sites. What's a Geek House, you ask? This is quite literally a house occupied by self-proclaimed Geeks who gather together for the purpose of... well, geeking out. Following arcane and intellectual pursuits or interests, such as, obviously, anything computer related. But it might also be Sci-Fi or Fantasy, role playing games, Amiga computers, and sundials.
What's even more fascinating about this site is that its connections date back ten or more years, some of them still exist, and some are just rubble to be picked through for clues about who was there, what they did, why they thought it was important to create a living space, a website, a locus of information - and then just vanish, like some ancient culture we can't quite understand.
And I started to wonder, as I have done before, what "cyberspace" will be like fifty years hence. While, yes, the actual machines that bear the code that is the reality of a world created online will have to continue to exist somewhere, be connected to the web somehow, even for those sites whose servers have gone offline, there will be little traces here and there, such as the links on The Armory to sites long abandoned.
Archeology, 21st century style!
Now, while there is a lot more information available, and it's so well-indexed by Google and the other search engines that even little oddball sites have way pointers, I rarely find myself just wandering around without a map.
The other day, though, I was researching a topic for work and actually ended up in one of those "I can't believe I found this" situations. I actually had one of those moments of realizing how big the world is, and how many little worlds are contained within it, ones that go on quietly in their own little orbit, important that those who occupy them, but not even noticed by the rest of us.
What I found was a site aggregator called "The Armory." Relating to a term associated with online gaming, The Armory is a collection of "Geek House" sites. What's a Geek House, you ask? This is quite literally a house occupied by self-proclaimed Geeks who gather together for the purpose of... well, geeking out. Following arcane and intellectual pursuits or interests, such as, obviously, anything computer related. But it might also be Sci-Fi or Fantasy, role playing games, Amiga computers, and sundials.
What's even more fascinating about this site is that its connections date back ten or more years, some of them still exist, and some are just rubble to be picked through for clues about who was there, what they did, why they thought it was important to create a living space, a website, a locus of information - and then just vanish, like some ancient culture we can't quite understand.
And I started to wonder, as I have done before, what "cyberspace" will be like fifty years hence. While, yes, the actual machines that bear the code that is the reality of a world created online will have to continue to exist somewhere, be connected to the web somehow, even for those sites whose servers have gone offline, there will be little traces here and there, such as the links on The Armory to sites long abandoned.
Archeology, 21st century style!
Comments