Tag: Internet Archive

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The Festival Floppies is a treasure trove of forgotten videogame history

Archivist Jason Scott is attempting to preserve the inherent historical value of videogames. The Festival Floppies is part of this project. Years back, Scott acquired a load of floppy disks that a friend found in 2009 at the Timonium Hamboree and Computer Festival in Baltimore, Maryland. Back then, the disks were just a collection of software in a big plastic box. But now they’re The Festival Floppies. Scott unloaded each of these disks, unearthing the software using a USB floppy drive and a program designed to pull stuff off the disks. All of the imaged files are available on the Internet Archive for…
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New website celebrates stories inspired by pre-broadband internet

Described as “a literary/graphic project…built by three artists with strong interests in screens”, websafe2k16 seeks to provide a platform for memories of a pre-broadband Internet. Using the Web Safe color palette, and its 216 colors, as a point of reference, the project consists of 216 authors who write 216 words each, inspired by a specific color in the web safe range. Beginning 2/16/16, one piece is published daily. The swatches and text of the site provide a homogeneous backdrop for the varied experiences of the authors. The site is a sparse visual landscape filled with odd and unexpected artefacts Old internet pages are…
The Malware Museum
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The beautiful destruction of old-school malware

Malware. Blech! We hate malware. And so we should—deleting files, maliciously clogging up our desktops, turning our browsers into never-ending adverts. But it’s so boring and irritating these days. At least back in the 1980s and 1990s you could take a step back and admire both the technical and artistic achievement of malware before it ate your computer. If you’re not familiar with the malware of yesteryear then, fret not, you needn’t miss out. The internet archivists at archive.org have teamed up with self-professed “malware adventurer” Mikko Hypponnen to provide The Malware Museum. It’s a collection of malware programs that…
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Travel back in time with the 1994 Texas budget simulator

The workings of a democracy are never pretty, but in 1994 the process of governmental sausage making couldn’t even be cloaked in a sleek interface.  In the spirit of remembering those halcyon days, feast your eyes on the 1994 Texas Budget Simulator created by the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and lovingly preserved by the Internet Archive: The Texas Budget Simulator does exactly what the box says, which is to say it’s a gussied up actuarial table. Actually, it’s barely gussied up. This spreadsheet is only a game insofar as it…
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Here is the old Bernie Sanders videogame that we aren’t ready to forget

Melancholia is meant to be seen on the largest screen possible. Reruns of Law and Order SVU are meant to be seen on your laptop. Puppy gifs are meant to be seen on your phone. (OK, that’s a lie. Puppy gifs are meant to be seen anywhere and everywhere.) From each according to its content, to each according to its screen.  a sentient dad joke who can play his part in memes  The optimal context for Bernie Sanders’ content is the Internet Archive’s “Way Back Machine,” a digital place in which everything takes on the quality of recent history. By virtue…
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MoMA.org celebrates two decades of existence with a gift to future art historians

Always having their heads in the past has meant that archivists and museum organizers are generalized as old curmudgeons who can’t see the future through the coat of dinosaur dust on their glasses. But the MoMA continues to earn the modernity label embedded in its name, as an emblem of what a museum can be when it embraces the ephemeral landscape of its subject. So when the screeching siren’s call of dial-up internet sounded, the Museum of Modern Art of course answered without skipping a beat, launching their website on May 25th 1995. As the MoMA blog post celebrating the anniversary…