way back machine
Has everyone seen this? It lets you travel through time… on the internet. So, you know how you surf the web? Well there are these computers called webcrawlers that have been built to surf the web too. Basically they follow the links that are on websites and “crawl” themselves around the internet (this is how sites like Google pick up data used for search information). Well, it just so happens some people decided they wanted to make webcrawlers that saved all the pages they came across and dated them for future access.
Hence, the way back machine. It allows you to enter a web address and view a site as it was, sometimes more than a decade ago. Granted, it isn’t perfect. Web technology has had many significant iterations since AOL ruled with an iron fist. Many sites have a lot of missing data, or don’t work at all. But if you have some favorite sites, it might be interesting to take a look back and see how far things have come in your internet neighborhood.