The Internet Archive

By Bruce Shawkey

A few days ago, I found this neat website, https://web.archive.org/. It claims to have archived more than 866 billion web pages (and growing every day). I searched for my old website, brucesvintagewatches.com, and sure enough it came up. The website was created to counteract the annoying phenomenon that web pages and web sites are so ethereal and disappear so fast. They are running into copyright trouble, but I hope they survive (they are non-profit). In 1996 Brewster Kahle realized the cultural significance of the Internet and the need to record its history. As a result, he founded the Internet Archive which collects and "permanently stores" the Web's digitized content. We'll see just how "permanent' it is. They are already soliciting for funds, much the same way Wikipedia is.

Here's what Wikipedia says about the Internet Archive:

The Internet Archive is an American nonprofit digital library founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle. It provides free access to collections of digitized materials including websites, software applications, music, audiovisual, and print materials. The Archive also advocates for a free and open Internet. As of February 4, 2024, the Internet Archive held more than 44 million print materials, 10.6 million videos, 1 million software programs, 15 million audio files, 4.8 million images, 255,000 concerts, and over 835 billion web pages in its Wayback Machine. Its mission is committing to provide "universal access to all knowledge."

The Internet Archive was offline for a while, the victim of a cyber-attack. It even made the NPR news.

I spun the roulette wheel, and the first website I explored was the National Security Agency, or NSA, which some say stands for "No Such Agency," due to all its clandestine activity. For example, the NSA is alleged to have been behind such attack software as Stuxnet, which severely damaged Iran's nuclear program. On the plus side, the NSA boasts that its research contributed significantly to the development of the super computer, the cassette tape, the microchip, quantum mathematics, nanotechnology, biometrics, and semiconductor technology.

President Harry Truman authorized the NSA's founding in 1952. From its beginnings, its annual budget has skyrocketed to the point where no one is sure how much it spends. Estimates range from $3.6 billion to $14.7 billion. 

Meanwhile, the Internet Archive is back up and running, although I'm not particularly fond of the new format, and some of the content is still unavailable (presumably being restored following the hack).

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