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Ghost Sites 19
----- GHOST SITES #19 [September 10, 1998]
----- by Steve Baldwin
(steve_baldwin@hotmail.com)
The back-to-school season always exerts an oddly schizoid effect on the
number of Ghost Sites clogging the Web's navigational waters. Many sites
maintained by returning college students are updated in September,
decreasing the Ghost Site population markedly.
But many other college-hosted home pages grow petrified and moribund in
September. This is because many graduates simply forgot to shut down,
obliterate, and purge their sites before checking out of their dorms for
the last time in the Spring.
By September, these same grads are already entering the workforce to
begin lifelong periods of servitude to Microsoft, GE, or the Pittsfield
Cab Company, and the last thing on their minds is to update their old
college sites, even if their Alma Maters would let them (and they
won't). So until the Computer Science Department pulls the plug, the
spectral remains of these departed students will live on for years -
possibly decades.
To celebrate the back-to-school season, Ghost Sites devotes a large
section of this issue's coverage to dead university pages littering the
Groves of Academe.
*---- THE VASSAR COLLEGE PROGRAM IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE ----*
----- http://openweb.vassar.edu/cogsci/coghome.html
This ancient page, "under construction" for more than three years,
resides on one of Vassar College's retired servers.
Like many Ghost Sites, its years of neglect are revealed in its many
broken links. What makes it fascinating, however, is how much neglect
seems to have been built into it from its inception, in terms of the
high number of spelling errors it contains ("Vassar College operates
the oldest undergraduate degree granding program in cognitive science in
the nation", and "completion during the senior year of an independent
research project on a tope chosen by the student" are two such examples
of neglect).
We're confident that spending $21,600 a year for a Vassar education is
going to turn our offspring into first-class semioticians, but how much
money would it take to teach the kids a little spelling?
Related URLs:
http://openweb.vassar.edu/
[4 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, Shows Advanced Decay
*---- WAXWEB 3.0 (UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA) ----*
----- http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/wax/
Every six months or so, I run into this peculiar site on my lonely
travels through the Net's morgue. But something always stops me from
declaring Waxweb dead. Maybe it's because I'm not sure that this odd
1994 hypermedia experiment - part nonlinear text, part cryptic images,
part time capsule - was ever alive.
Approach this dead site with caution: its maddeningly nonlinear
hodgepodge of cryptic images, self-important philosophical ramblings,
and pointless existential encounters between imaginary characters induce
a weird, fuguelike mood that's hard to shake.
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, but Well-Preserved
*---- A THOUSAND POINTS OF SITES ----*
----- http://inls.ucsd.edu/y/OhBoy/randomjump1.html
This crusty site, housed at the Nonlinear Science Institute at the
University of California at San Diego, generates random Web site links
from a huge grid of lookalike images. Like the famous URL Roulette, its
appeal to the adventurous is to send them to a randomly selected Web
site when you click on a "point".
Unfortunately, the degree of randomness provided by a Thousand Points of
Sites is considerably diminished by the number of dead links it
references. So in operation, there's almost nothing unpredictable about
it, because almost every "point" links to an identical "File Not Found"
message.
This is kind of like playing a Ghost Sites version of Mine Sweeper. Just
click on any "point" and see if you can avoid being blown up by an Error
404!
Related URLs:
http://inls.ucsd.edu/
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
*---- NATALIE ENGEL'S CHEST OF LUST, LONGING AND OBSESSION ----*
----- http://hamp.hampshire.edu/~dbtF93/
Natalie Engel is (or was) a college student atHampshire College whose
home page provides a close look at contemporary undergraduate
obnoxiousness (including a message which asks "What are you, some kind
of Pervert?" when a user clicks to her second page). Her page of links
is impressively broken, a situation to which Engel would probably
respond "So what? Live with it, creep".
But Engel hoists herself by her own petard when she declares "this home
page will not make you want to take a little nap." Frankly, it makes us
want to take a big one - to sleep for a thousand years, and then to wake
up to find Engel's page still glowering at us.
Related URLs:
http://www.hampshire.edu/
http://hamp.hampshire.edu/~dbtF93/index2.html
http://hamp.hampshire.edu/~dbtF93/TOUR.html
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved
*---- CRAPFINDER ----*
----- http://c3f.com/crapfinda.html
CrapFinder was launched to poke fun at Time-Warner's Pathfinder, a site
I used to work for. Although its satirical intent hasn't aged well, the
site now functions as a priceless historical record of Pathfinder's 2.0
redesign, which was commissioned after months of backbreaking
focus-group research. Because all traces of this redesign were long ago
purged from the real site's servers, CrapFinder provides the only extant
copy of the way Pathfinder actually looked during its crucial 1995-1996
period.
The fact that CrapFinder outlived Pathfinder 2.0 supports a theory I've
long held about Internet History, which is that much of the task of Web
preservation will be left to pirates, hackers, and copyright violaters.
Corporations often are positively Orwellian about erasing their past
"crude" Web experiments. But outlaws often serve Posterity well, because
they frequently save things from the digital dumpster that no sane
copyright holder would preserve (like this redesign).
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved
*---- CENTRAL PARK SUMMERSTAGE 1995 ----*
----- http://www.nyo.com/summerstage/
Ghost Site Watcher Glenn Booth was kind enough to send this decaying
piece of New York's digital infrastructure on to us. Central Park
SummerStage 1995 is a guide to music, film, and cultural events in NYC's
famed park that's over 1,000 days out of date, but still calls the urban
masses forth to gather with Anna Quinlan, Black Stalin, Joan Osborn, and
hundreds of other performers who've probably forgotten they were ever
there.
Adding insult to injury, the site's link to an updated 1996 event
schedule is broken, although many other links dutifully lead to
similarly antiquated pages recounting exciting "current" events
occurring in New York's distant past.
Related URLs:
http://www.nyo.com/summerstage/docs/schedule.html
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved
*---- CNN INTERACTIVE'S LOVE ZONE ----*
----- http://www.cnn.com/EVENTS/valentine/
CNN runs a pretty good news site, so why is it still mucking about with
this decaying shrine to Valentine's Day, 1996? This oddly conceived site
features the salacious voice of CNN Sports Anchor Bob Lorenz, plus a
mildewing box of obsolete links, including one to People Magazine's
electronic valentine card service, which apparently will fire off a
Valentine any day of the year if you tell it to.
Frankly, if anyone sent us a Valentine's card in the middle of
September, we'd sic Interpol on them for Net Stalking.
Related URLs:
http://www.cnn.com/EVENTS/valentine/sounds/love_thang.aiff
http://pathfinder.com/people/tunnel/postcards/pick.html
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
*---- WINDOWS RAG ----*
----- http://www.eskimo.com/~scrufcat/wr.html
"We're outa here", this jaunty corpse announces. A defunct e-zine
devoted to supplying "advice for users who couldn't afford the biggest
and best of computer equipment", Windows Rag went under when its
editor-in-chief was hired by Microsoft to head up HTML development at
MSN.COM sometime in 1995.
Before Microsoft assimilated every last synapse of brain matter at this
site, Windows Rag managed to win a 3-star rating from McKinley.Com's
editorial team - which was itself assimilated into Excite.Com long ago.
Ashes to ashes.
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, but Well-Preserved
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The website edition includes images, a nice design, and all the latest
news about Ghost Sites. Go there to read the latest:
http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites/
Copyright 1996-1999 Steve Baldwin Associates.
Webdesign, hosting and publication by Disobey.
http://www.disobey.com/
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