September 16, 2000
Untitled
I keep nearly everything. Obsolete computer hardware, software that only ever existed on 5.25″ floppies, back issues of magazines, scrap lumber, and every pair of Converse Chuck Taylor high tops I have worn since 1980. People around me know this, and in some cases are moderately frightened by it. Applying this strange habitual behavior to the web, I have kept copies of every piece of HTML I have ever marked up, every Photoshop source file, and practically every directory structure iteration of every site I have ever worked on. Perhaps this is why I felt a tinge of helplessness when I read this Technology Review article entitled In Search of Webs Past.
“Think of the Web as an enormous, slow hard disk. Shared by the entire world, this disk holds a record of radical media experimentation, the history of a form that sprang up less than a decade ago to infect popular consciousness and transform the way we use information. Yet despite a few archival projects, no one is backing up our collective disk.”
In a world obsessed with instancy, dynamism, and renovation, thank goodness folks like Zeldman are sauntering over to the digital tool shed, picking out a suitable spade, and digging through their old backups like so much code compost. Posting old pages for the public to gawk over requires a fair bit of courage, and an ability to resist the embarrassment of past designs. Maybe I’m still as attached to previous accomplishments as much as I am intrigued by new opportunities. Believe it or not, old stuff still has value. You just need to present it in context.
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