Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine

Originally Posted 4/8/24

image of the Internet Archive logo. It looks like the entrance to the Greek Partheon - stairways leading up to 4 big pillars holding up a roof. The internet archive logo itself though is much more simplistic, with simple black rectangles making up most of the image. The words Internet Archive are also along the left and top of the image.

What is the Internet Archive and Wayback Machine?

The Internet Archive is an online archive for digital files. This can be computer programs, books, movies, shows, songs, photos, basically anything that can be accessed on a computer can be uploaded to the Internet Archive. The Wayback Machine is a part of the Internet Archvie which specifically focuses on preserving websites.

Sounds cool, but when would I use something like this?

There's been a couple of times where the Internet Archive has come in handy for me. The first is one of the places I worked, our websites went down because of an issue with our provider, and we couldn't get them back up. We couldn't even get the Wordpress files to try and recreate the site. We ended up choosing to move to a new website provider, and instead of trying to tell them how our site looked originally, I was able to just send them a link to how the site looked, and they could use that to base it off of.

Another cool thing, with that job in particular, is I was able to pull up versions of the site going all the way back to 2001.This let me make some posts about things that happened historically at the station, including old logos, news stories, etc.

One fun way the Internet Archive has come in handy, is seeing old video footage. This video for example, one of my friends shared in a Discord server a couple of years ago. It's a video from 1943 apparently from the Walt Disney Company about making sure to pay your taxes which help with the war effort. "Rembember, every dollar you spend for something you don't need, is a dollar spent to help the Axis".

The last thing I find useful about it is just being able to look up and find historic pieces of software or images and such. I've been able to find things like the old Oregon Trail game, or find old pictures to use in videos or presentations about a subject.

Wrap Up

I wanted to make this post because to me the Internet Archive and Wayback Machine are great tools that can really come in handy. There's been a handful of times in real life where I mention them to someone, and they have never heard about it before. I think it's a shame because there's so much that can be found there. I also just really appreciate some organization trying to preserve digital things, as it's so easy for that stuff to get lost forever if a service or company just disappears.

I will mention that the Internet Archive was sued last year due to it lending out books that had been uploaded. They so far have lost the court case, which I think is a bit sad. However I'm still pretty happy it exists and like I said, that someone is trying to make an archive of these things.

As always, let me know your thoughts at steventanzimedia@gmail.com