The Web’s Lost and Found
Have you ever been in a situation where you Googled a certain website or webpage you had accessed before to discover it was no longer available? Or maybe you couldn’t open an old link with a presentation, article, video, quiz, image, or infographic you planned to use for class or for a meeting at work. “It’s such a shame, it was a valuable resource. Now it’s lost!” you might think to yourself. Thankfully, there’s a possible solution to that disappointing 404 Error Not Found page that appears after clicking your link. It’s called Wayback Machine, and it’s a historical digital archive of all the World Wide Web’s publicly available information. It gives users access to archived versions of webpages as they have developed across time, even if they’re no longer available online. You just have to enter the link of the webpage you couldn’t find in the search box of the archive’s home page, and, if the site crawled that particular page, you’ll see a calendar with all the versions available for you to access. Owned by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California, the Wayback Machine is like the web’s lost and found department that might as well save the day.
Universal Access to All Knowledge
Named after the time-traveling machine from the 1960s cartoon series The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, the Wayback Machine was created in 1996 by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat in an effort to preserve web content from disappearing because of website changes or shut downs. With the mission of providing universal access to all knowledge, this library of the Internet seeks to serve as a means for the democratization of information for the advancement of humanity.
The archive opened to the public in October 2001 containing over 10 billion archived web pages stored on digital tape. As of February 2023, the Wayback Machine holds over 789 billion web pages and is part of the Internet Archive which now includes millions of books, movies, software, and music for free. This content is uploaded both internally and by third parties.
How can you use the Wayback Machine?
- To visit web sites that no longer exist.
- To compare different versions of web pages through the “Changes” tab in the results section of a URL search.
- To save web pages for future use as citations through the Save Page Now feature
- To get access to original source code of websites that may no longer be directly available.
- Social scientists have used the web pages history to analyze website development and company growth.
- A Wayback Machine Extension for Google Chrome allows users to see different versions of websites, save websites, and read archived books & papers while conveniently browsing.
The Wayforward Machine
For its 25th anniversary the Internet Archive launched the Wayforward Machine, a prediction of what the Internet will look like in 2046 if the status quo and current tendencies continue regarding information access. The prediction is Orwellian regarding manipulation, control, and censorship of information. The Archive is thus also an activist organization that fights against these practices and advocates for a free and open Internet.
