Internet Archive

I’m a fan of the Wayback Machine (seriously, what a great idea) but didn’t really think that much about the Internet Archive until it came up in a recent New Yorker article. What? The Internet Archive is in SF? Wow! I should really go check it out. Then I promptly forgot about this until I happened to be coming along Clement St and saw a sign «Internet Archive». I’m at Clement St pretty frequently and can’t believe I didn’t know it was right here all along. Luckily I stumbled upon my find on an evening when they were having a party to celebrate net neutrality which made me even happier to be served free alcohol.
But to get the whole story I returned the next day. The Internet Archive is only open to the public on Fridays 1−3pm. At 1pm there’s a 30 – 45 minute tour.
When I arrived there was some sort of special lunch going on and I hopped on a tour led by none other than Brewster Kahle himself (not sure if this is a common occurrence). We got to tour the building and learn about all that they do, not just the Wayback Machine but also tv shows, books, games, etc. It’s pretty impressive and all publicly available.

Love the classic building, awesome staff (Brewster, June, Alexis, & Ralf et. al.) and mission. My fav is the large area with all the 3 ft statues of the 99 staff standing in pews looking at the stage. Kudos to the artist (s)!

The internet is hella serious. This building demonstrates the awesomeness.
The good people at the Internet Archive are do gooders. If you’ve ever used the Wayback Machine, then you know some of the good they have done.
One of the other things that I think is really cool is their archiving of as much as possible. That’s bad assed do-​gooding right there.
A few times I’ve gotten bored and clicked on there to watch some old timey PSA films. You gotta love those– even if they’re totally dated. But that’s what I love about having this in a digital archive. We can see what the past was like and compare it to how we have/​have not progressed since then.

Damn what a cool website! This site is chock full of old short films of fascinating or notorious quality. You can learn to «Duck and Cover» with a smiling turtle for example or watch a silent film shot in SF after the 1906 quake and fire. You can watch great classic films on «social guidance» that are either hilarious (What to do on a date, Body Care and Grooming) or deeply disturbing (such as the homophobic Boys Beware). Other great shorts are on the digging in of the BART trains in the 1960s. They also have a «wayback» machine that lets you type in a web address and they take you back to what the website looked like the past. Perfect if you’re a history-​tech geek like me! Watch the movies as streaming or download them if you have the bandwidth.
awesome site! A great time waster when you’re at wor … I mean, home! :-) Wear headphones though if you don’t want to be heard as the movies of course have sound.