The advent of the internet changed the way that we present and gather information. It gave us instantaneous access to resources online, but there was a catch: the website you went to religiously for reliable information might contain the backlog of material appearing on that site, but one day, you’d try to access the site and it was suddenly gone. Unlike a library full of books, websites lack a reasonable guarantee of permanence.
In 1996, two years after the launch of the World Wide Web, tech visionary Brewster Kahle realized the necessity of permanently archiving the information online. He opened the Internet Archive in a beautiful old Christian Scientist church in San Francisco, where he, his staff, and volunteers went through the process of preserving the fleeting contents of websites, books, music, and other materials, creating a library of our culture in the digital age. Among other things, it has recorded 825 billion web pages. Of those, 204 are early issues of Proust Said That.
In October of this year, the Internet Archive was attacked by outside bad actors three times, who shut down access with a DDoS and stole the credentials of 31 million users. The attackers identified themselves as SN_BLACKMETA, and claimed the attack was because it “belongs to the USA,” which was supporting Israeli genocide. Although the Archive receives some grants from the government, it’s owned by Brewster, one of the kindest and least genocidal people you could imagine.
The attack seems based on pro-Palestinian anger, but there is no evidence whatsoever that the Archive had the slightest involvement with the crimes under way in Gaza. In an era when disinformation, outrage propaganda, outside agitators, and sheer lies are rampant online, it’s easy to imagine someone who wants to make Palestinians and their supporters look bad attribute blame for damage to a huge public good on them. Or maybe SN_BLACKMETA has an interest in making some information disappear—exactly the reason why the Archive was started and remains an invaluable asset. Without the Archive, our cultural history is largely lost. It becomes possible to erase evidence of malfeasance and things said in error. It’s the documentation of reality in the digital age.
The Internet Archive is also one of the most perfect examples of how an organization should be run. They hosted a weekly lunch that anyone could attend by calling and asking to be included. When employees told Brewster Kahle that they couldn’t afford housing in San Francisco anymore, he bought them a building. And to ensure that his staff really felt appreciated, he commissioned the artist Nuala Creed to create 2/3-sized clay sculptures of everyone who worked there, inspired by the ancient sculptures of Chinese warriors. All the staff, past and present, is commemorated in the grand central room of the Archive.
Like every entry in this blog, there is a quote from Proust. Finding the appropriate quote is why new posts appear so seldom, as there are thousands of pages of Proust to comb in the search for the perfect quote. I can no longer remember where I found this one:
“…reading tends to take its place, when the truth no longer appears to us as an ideal which we can realize only by the intimate progress of our own thought and the efforts of our heart, but as something material, deposited between the leaves of books like a honey fully prepared by others and which we need only take the trouble to reach down from the shelves of libraries and then sample passively in a perfect repose of mind and body.”
Proust Said That 