Dusty Corners of the Web
I will admit that I am occasionally egotistical enough to do web searches for my name. In a small part, this is because I’m looking for folks who might be mentioning or linking to this site. Another large factor is that it reminds me that there sure is not much that gets permanently lost on the web. Since I almost always use my own name on message boards, there are any number of things I’ve said over the last decade floating around in various web archives at this point, and they go further back into my teenage years if you count Google Groups. (I’m kind of glad that it doesn’t look like a lot of FidoNet is archived on the web. I cringe enough at some of the things I said when I was 14 when I’m the only guy who remembers them.)
One thing that I am certainly glad has found an archived home is the collection of chats/interviews that Omni Interactive sponsored back in the day. I spent a couple of months working for Omni right out of college, and it was not my favorite working experience. Omni had been converted from a print magazine to a web site, and the feel of the guillotine was there . . . indeed, a few months after I left, even the site was shut down. Also, the parent company is the same one that owned Penthouse, so when I went to work I was just surrounded by Penthouse-related artwork and publications. It was not the most comfortable of environments. But one thing that did come out of the whole thing is that I got to host some of these chats, specifically within the E-Media series. I got to talk to comics artist Frank Miller about censorship, Babylon 5 composer Christopher Franke about music technology, and someone from the Henson Company Creature Shop when they were pitching this thing called Farscape. Even the Omni site is gone these days, but someone’s archived its contents, including all the chats. So you can check them out if you are so inclined.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.
Tuesday, February 21st 2006 at 1:02 am |
Actually, I have found a cringeworthy number of my Fidonet posts archived in various places.
As I’ve had a running archive of my stuff on the web in one place for upward of ten years, I usually treat anyplace that has, erm, “archived” my material (which is almsot all still readily available) with some irritation. Legal action, depending on who they are! So here’s the question of the day: how do you feel about this archiving of your stuff that you were, at one time, paid to do, when the original archive is gone now? Is there some satisfaction that someone cared enough to hang on to it, or…”some irritation”?
Tuesday, February 21st 2006 at 6:00 pm |
Oh, man, don’t tell me that about Fido. I guess so long as Google hasn’t found them yet . . .
As for the Omni archive – I have no mixed feelings whatsoever. In part, that’s because I don’t own the content – it’s General Media’s (or its successor companies’) responsibility to guard whatever intellectual property rights they had. And the old Omni website is long gone, so I’m much happierthat the content is preserved. (In fact, I just checked, and it automatically redirects to the Penthouse site. muttermuttermutter)
Now, if someone had archived the content and then done a search-and-replace to remove the names of the original interviewers to make it look like the archiver had done them, that would be an entirely different story.