Not unlike the universe, the internet is unpredictable, turbulent and just sometimes nonsensical. Before the Dot Com bubble burst and the dawn of apps, everything in the world had its own web page. But with everything switching to social media sites and/or apps, web pages have pretty much disappeared. With deep digging search engines it can be fun to explore obsolete web pages that have absolutely no reason to still be online. Like this blast from the past from the Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/yrreview/year.htm
Yup – that’s right. 1996 year in review. The Macarena was the hottest song of the year – The nation was mourning the death of Tupac, Alanis Morissette just released her seminal work, “Jagged Little Pill” and the Cowboys just won the Super Bowl
1996 – what a year. Their was some horrible stuff going on around the world as well, like the fallout of the Rwandan genocide , The Atlanta Olympic bombings (a night I will never forget for as long as I live, personally) and the mysterious disappearance and subsequent crash of Flight 800.
Also: Dolly the sheep was cloned, the DVD was invented and the N64 was released in Japan.
So why am I showing you this? You may be asking yourself , “Who really gives a shit?” And that is a great question and one I don’t really have a satisfactory answer for. I guess I’d have to say: no one really gives a shit. BUT not giving a shit about things as trivial as this can have real consequence.
From a security stand point I would say, forgotten and abandoned twenty four year old webpages like this are probably pretty vulnerable to cyber attacks. Hackers have much more nefarious intentions and way more tools at their disposal these days as well – gone are the days of colorful and creative but harmless Floppy disk viruses. The criminal underworld has been on the web for quite awhile and a lot of it has even become state sponsored – hackers with a license to kill. But that is for a later day.
For now – break out your mixology for dummies book and make yourself a Cable Car, thumb through pages of the past before you sit back and see if Ross and Rachel ever actually figured it out.
Being a huge music fan (and a musician myself I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to showcase one of my favorite bands of all time, The Walkman. Enjoy!
I believe that many people today have nostalgia for those years, between 90 and 2000 because the internet was still to be explored and we made real friends, we found love, they got married and it really worked. Now the web, and social networks, are full of fake profiles, people who scam, people who are only looking for money, people who play a role and put good photos to attract customers. Now even blogs and forums will close because few people want to write. True, they are all in the apps. What a hateful thing!
I completely agree with you! Rigid societal norms have overtaken most social interaction on the web. Long ago it seemed people were less guarded and more open to exploring a more vulnerable, creative side of their personality. Now there are much less of us left, thank you for reading. ☺️
Now people are very suspicious and empathetic, but they fall more easily into scams. All it takes is a sexy female profile and everyone falls for the trap.