British Library warns of 'black hole' in history if websites and digital files are not preserved. "Historians of the future, citizens of the future, will find a black hole in the knowledge base of the 21st century." In addition to dead file formats and lost information from government websites, Lynne Brindley also points to the habits of individuals. "I call it personal digital disorder. Think of those thousands of digital photographs that lie hidden on our computers. Few store them, so those who come after us will not be able to look at them."
posted by cashman on Jan 26, 2009 - 63 comments

The Open Content Alliance poses a threat to Google and Microsoft's competing library digitization projects. OCA was founded by the Internet Archive, whose main claim to fame is the Wayback Machine, designed to archive the internet's web history. OCA's mission is to open the nation's library collections to universal web search by digitizing books and making them as widely accessible as possible. [more inside]
posted by richards1052 on Oct 22, 2007 - 9 comments

drew*#*#^*# - among the few sites about which I wax nostalgic, drew was one of the first really hilarious (imo) inter-net sites I discovered. Unfortunately, the site has become defunct (for the most part), but that's why God made the Wayback Machine, which allows you to view the past archives. Besides his various writings (including an unfinished novel entitled Temp Jobbin'), he gained relative internet stardom for his lego porn site, which due to litigation he had to change to block-structure porn. He also popularized Domokun and received a great deal of hate for his instructions on how to kill squirrels with electricity. He even took the time to register morrisseydance.com. Lately drew has been writing for .net magazine and drawing and sellings images through toothpaste for dinner. drew doesn't suit your taste? Perhaps you'd like other dumbrella member sites including diesel sweeties and exploding dog.
posted by Frankieist on Dec 13, 2004 - 16 comments

archive.org recently launched films, audio, software, and text in addition to the wayback machine. The comic goldmine and best find of the new archive has to be the public domain sex ed films from the 1950s, part of the Prelinger Archives.
posted by mathowie on Sep 10, 2002 - 10 comments

Alexa, the internet depository that lead to things like the wayback machine was acquired by Amazon some time ago. A new service, Alexa Web Search joins the power of Alexa's archive with Amazon's proven interface and feature set with Google's killer-app level searching power. The results are fairly impressive, adding a related sites layer that may actually help folks browsing the web (as opposed to direct searching). [via anil]
posted by mathowie on Apr 29, 2002 - 28 comments

When Netscape looked like this, Microsoft looked like this, and Apple had no style at all, although it appears that MetaFilter hasn't changed much. Go back in time and get all nostalgic with your favourite web sites at The WayBack Machine.
posted by Mwongozi on Apr 22, 2002 - 8 comments

The Wayback machine shows some biographical reconstructive surgery for the Secretary of the U.S. Army. Post-Enron collapse bio versus pre-Enron Collapse bio. 1984 style revisionism meet digital storage technology! [story from NTK].
posted by srboisvert on Feb 24, 2002 - 5 comments

The Website of the Anti-Taliban Government of Afghanistan, pre-hack. Courtesy of the The Wayback Machine.
posted by tpoh.org on Oct 17, 2001 - 3 comments