saving ink

The other day, I stumbled upon a website that initially induced feelings of aesthetic nausea, but after a few clicks, brought back what can only be described as a warm, if uneasy, nostalgia. It was a website chronicling old HTML sites from the early days of web 1.0, when oversized T-shirts were the rage, along with oversized <marquee> tags. A virtual graveyard of Geocities and AOL addresses.

And I remembered my own foray into programming. Like all of my friends, when I was 14 I had built my own HTML website, full of animated GIFs, scrolling text, and JPGs of Fox Mulder (future husband) and UFOs. And it had a guestbook, which had a wealth of inside jokes made by silly high school freshmen.

As far as I know, that site is gone, or at least gone from my eyes. I don’t have the original address, and I don’t even remember for sure whether it was on Geocities or another service. I tried some unsuccessful googling of former AIM screennames and my original Hotmail account, but it seems that my Internet infancy, like baby pictures lost in a fire, is gone forever.

But imagine if I were 14 today. As soon as I made my website, which, while lacking the obvious appeal of flashing GIFs and unstoppable MIDI theme songs, would undoubtedly be much more stylish, I would post it on Facebook, link to it from Twitter, and Gmail it to all of my friends. Then, years and years into the future, assuming I was spared in the robot apocalypse, I would just have to search my Gmail account for that original link and a part of my childhood would return.

So what I really, really don’t understand is the people who bemoan our times. Yes, everything is recorded. Yes, there might be a disturbing lack of privacy. But the Internet as a whole is a living record of each individual life, and the greatest storehouse of memories man has ever invented.

Each blog is a diary that your mom didn’t accidentally throw away. Each email from a lover is a letter that didn’t get lost in the move. And each personal website that’s created is a snapshot of the individual behind it during the span of its existence.

I realize that during every revolution, a majority of those living through it end up yearning for the “good old days”, even when those days aren’t that old and in hindsight turn out to not have been that good in the first place. But those who are in their 20s now or younger, those with at least the smallest ounce of tech savviness, should realize that we’re living in amazing times, and instead of hindering the revolution - or worse, whining about it - we should take full advantage, and leave our marks for generations to come.