Do you guys ever use the Internet Archive for anything? I agree that they’re doing a great job archiving things, but realistically, through time most of things which happened have been forgotten.

I use the Wikipedia like once a week to look something up, but I only ever used the Internet Archive to look at a early version of my own website. But never for anything else. But perhaps I’m missing out on something?

  • @oxjox@lemmy.ml
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    174 months ago

    through time

    Dude, you’re saying this as though the internet has been around for millennia. And as if you’ve never been to / heard of a library.

    I’ve downloaded a ton of music videos to create my own self-hosted MTV station. I’ve downloaded music and books. I’ve used it to view non-paywalled (NYT) articles shared on Lemmy. I live in Philadelphia so I’ve used it to look up the earliest version of the “yellow pages” or “white pages” from the 1800s. I’ve searched for the videos they used to show us in elementary school on 16mm - stuff about the expansion of the USA, the national parks, history of my state or city, etc. I’ve used it to look up tv commercials from the 1980s for a bit of nostalgia and older tv shows that people have uploaded from their personal VHS collection. Some people just upload personal stuff that’s entirely mundane but voyeuristically interesting. And I’m certain I haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s on there.