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Ghost Sites 09
----- GHOST SITES #9 [November 11, 1997]
----- by Steve Baldwin
(steve_baldwin@hotmail.com)
Welcome to Ghost Sites of the Web - the Net's oddly refreshing guide to
derelict, under-maintained, and utterly useless Web sites -- electronic
relics from a time when "Being Digital" still had some glamour attached
to it.
This week, we've got a typical assortment of rotten HTML - a fistful of
Ghost Sites that have all seen better days. Someday, these digital
dustbunnies might have substantial collectible value, but right now,
they're just refugees rusting out their lives in the sprawling junkyard
we call cyberspace.
*---- ADAM CURRY'S FAVORITE WEB PAGES ----*
----- http://metaverse.com/vibe/surf.html#links
Remember Adam Curry? Years ago, this disenchanted Video Jock
appropriated "mtv.com" from under the news of the snoozing, clueless
music conglomerate. For a brief spell, users typing "mtv.com" went
straight to Curry, instead of to the home page of the the real MTV. Once
MTV woke up, it loaded up a 727 full of lawyers, who hunted Curry down
and forced him to relinquish the domain name. The defeated Curry wasn't
beaten, however - instead, he became a sort of folk hero after taking on
the Evil Empire, and his hipness quotient skyrocketed.
Now, two years later, sections of Curry's "Metaverse" site have grown as
rusty as an old Cuban trawler. His Favorite Web Pages area is a dandy
preserved in aspic, replete with an ancient broken link to NCSA's
"What's New" Page.
Elsewhere on Metaverse, we learn that the site "is on temporary hiatus"
-- never an encouraging thing to read on any web site - especially one
that used to top the "Hot Sites" lists. But Curry's Cyber-Sleaze - a
trashy LA-centric music gossip column - continues to pollute the Web on
a daily basis, so I wouldn't count Adam out of the game -- yet.
Related URLs:
http://metaverse.com/vibe/home.html#contents
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, but Well-Preserved
*---- THE MIT FRESHMAN FISHWRAP ----*
----- http://fishwrap.mit.edu/whatis.html
This ominous Ghost Site comes from the cobwebbed laboratory of Nick
Negroponte, a 10-foot tall Net Genius whose concept of the "Personal Me"
nearly destroyed Web publishing when it spawned the great
Personalization Fever of 1996.
The whole fiasco began when the ruling MBA's of many major media
companies read a book by Negroponte called "Being Digital", memorized
the "Personal Me" sections, and began spending millions of dollars on
expensive and abortive web-based "personalized" news products which all
failed with a year. The aftershocks of this disaster are still being
felt - the Great Personalization Disaster of 1996 led directly to the
bloody editorial purges of 1997, which continue today.
Here, in the innocent-looking, "personalized" MIT Freshman Fishwrap - we
find what is perhaps the prototype for all this destructive madness.
This little magazine began it all - all the pain, red ink, and wrecked
careers - right in Negroponte's laboratory.
Like Ebola in a jar, the MIT Fishwrap and its dreaded Personalization
Imperative are truly horrifying things to behold. The world can only
hope this monster is really dead -- and not just taking a breather.
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
*---- THE 48TH CANNES INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ----*
----- http://www.interactive8.com/cannes/
Here's some ephermeral celluloid garbage which offers a long look back
to the dimly remembered avant garde films of 1995. An early experiment
in sponsored content, this Ghost Site isn't much to look at, except for
its exquisitely preserved images of the alcoholic "Mr. Jenkies",
Tanqueray Gin's supercilious spokesman of yesteryear who has disappeared
from every other media - print, TV and radio.
A repository of broken links, outdated gossip, and moldy dealmaking, the
48th Cannes International Film Festival site is blitheringly unconscious
of its ghastly electronic afterlife, going so far as to ask unwary users
to "check back for daily updates." We love it that way.
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
*---- LIFE WITHOUT THE IRS: A REALISTIC ALTERNATIVE ----*
----- http://www.no-irs.com/
Only the smoldering shell of what might have been a groundbreaking
Net-based guerilla movement remains at Americans for Constitutional
Action. Every link on this site is broken - exactly the sort of complete
devastation one would expect from a coordinated black helicopter attack.
Yahoo (which is becoming world-renowned for its incredible, unintended
ghost links), still lists ACA as a "grassroots organization whose
purpose is to lawfully replace the federal income tax with a federal
retail sales tax, and to abolish the IRS". Whatever the ACA once was -
this unfortunate site has grass growing through its battered roof.
We pray that Pierre Salinger again comes forward to clarify what went
terrible wrong with this site.
[4 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, shows advanced Decay
*---- THE ALTERNATIVE FUTURE THINK TANK HOME PAGE ----*
----- http://orion.oac.uci.edu/~spk/aftt.html
This dead egghead site seems to have toppled from the weight of its
rhetoric. Housed at the University of California at Irvine, its modest
mission on the Net was to "look to apply post-modern, post-structural,
post-colonial and what ever may follow, to social, and particularly
political 'scientific' studies."
Post-structural what? Post-colonial what? Emoticons?
Even if the Think Tank is actually applying whatever it is they seek to
apply, the site is going nowhere - the Tank's last active discussion
sessions, which dissected a book called Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia, occurred in April of 1996, with nary a post-structural
word logged since.
Although the Alternative Future Think Tank now appears drained of brain
fluid, it remains interesting for two reasons: because of the stone-age
tools used to design it (the elVIS editor for IBM's OS/2 Warp), and
above all, because it provides a chilling vision of what the world might
be like if social scientists ever seized power.
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, but Well-Preserved
*---- STROBE ----*
----- http://www.iuma.com/Strobe/
This flash-in-the-pan LA-based music 'zine from IUMA (the Internet
Underground Music Archive) suspended publication in early 1997, but
still provides an archive for the world to see. Judging from its last
issue, Strobe had dreams of being a trendy, teenaged world-killer - an
ode to the West Coast's unsigned, thwarted youth running amok in LA mosh
clubs. Like many fledgling e-zines, Strobe drowned in the surf of
indifference, anomie, and bad writing which are the scrouge of the teen
'zine scene.
From the evidence here, Strobe looks such an inconsequential,
badly-conceived project that it's almost endearing. It tried to hard to
be different that it wound up looking like every other Web site, just as
today's passionately individualistic "alternative" songwriters all wind
up sounding the same.
Perhaps in death Strobe will find its true voice, but I wouldn't bet on
it.
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
*---- HYPERDISCORDIA ----*
----- http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/
This web tribute to the famous "Principia Discordia" of Robert Anton
Wilson works extremely well as a Ghost Site. Clicking on the site's
"What's New" button reveals that there is indeed "Nothing New Under the
Sun". Clicking elsewhere engulfs the user in an endless trail of Gothic
conspiracy thinking and soft-core pornography, frozen in time.
Like Discordian philosophy itself, the HyperDiscordia site spins itself
into a frenzy, but leads nowhere. Otherworldly, unstuck in time and
space, HyperDiscordia is the perfect metaphor for today's Web - a
self-enclosed psychotic egosystem so advanced that it's abolished its
potential to evolve.
[4 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, but Well-Preserved
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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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