PUBLIC MARKS with tags history & patrimoine

Now, getting nostalgic for a fin de Netscape time-waster is a new and disturbing sensation for me: Web content is designed to dissolve in your brain like dopamine Certs. Yet my Homestar bar stool still feels warm: Firing up the old URL, knit cap in hand, I’m suddenly back in the early Aughts, watching Strong Bad answer his email, kick the Cheat, his rhomboid accomplice, and dream up such memorable mini-memes as the majestic dragon Trogdor the Burninator — a Trapper Keeper-quality pencil doodle with a catchy metal theme song. (It ended up name-checked in the Buffy finale and eventually landed in Guitar Hero II.)

Fourteen years ago, a pasty Irish teenager with a flair for inventions arrived at Edinburgh University to study artificial intelligence and computer science. For his thesis project, Ian Clarke created "a Distributed, Decentralised Information Storage and Retrieval System", or, as a less precise person might put it, a revolutionary new way for people to use the internet without detection. By downloading Clarke's software, which he intended to distribute for free, anyone could chat online, or read or set up a website, or share files, with almost complete anonymity.

Geocities is finally, after nearly fifteen years, bowing its head and closing its doors. While the first reactions of many, like myself, was, "it's about time;" others embraced the nostalgia of their first websites in the nineties - full of animated gifs, enormous counters, midi tunes, frames, tables, ... the list goes on and on. With that said, we can all agree on one thing if we're truly honest with ourselves: this closure is long overdue!