Last week, I fell into a rabbit hole I still haven’t climbed out of.
Save the URL. Save the weird. Save the old growth.
You will find a world that isn't trying to sell you anything. It isn't trying to radicalize you. It is just... there. Existing. virgin forest internet archive
I realized recently that we have a digital equivalent of this, and it lives at the . But unlike the physical virgin forests, which are shrinking, the digital virgin forest of the old web is growing—even if it is a ghost forest.
I started my journey looking for a Geocities page from 1998 about The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time . I didn't find it. Instead, I found something better: a random homepage for a cat named "Socks" from 1997, a midi file of "Wind Beneath My Wings" autoplaying in the background, and a guestbook with entries from people who are likely grandparents now. Last week, I fell into a rabbit hole
Conservationists know that a healthy virgin forest needs "dead wood" on the forest floor. Fallen logs feed the soil. Rotting matter allows new things to grow.
It refers to a woodland that has never been logged, cleared, or touched by industrial tools. It is old growth. It is the original code of the land, running on its own natural operating system, undisturbed by the saw and the surveyor’s map. Save the old growth
There is a phrase ecologists use that has always broken my heart a little:
We spend so much time "building" the future of the web—AI, VR, the Metaverse. We treat the past as a junkyard.
But the ? That is the old growth.
The web of 2024 is a manicured suburb. It is loud, commercial, and optimized to death. Every page wants your email. Every article is cut off by a paywall. Every scroll is interrupted by a sticky header begging for a subscription. The modern internet is a clear-cut forest planted with rows of identical poplars (SEO farms and social media feeds).