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Ghost Sites 04
----- GHOST SITES #4 [September 7, 1996]
----- by Steve Baldwin
(steve_baldwin@hotmail.com)
With millions of aspiring webmasters returning to their university
computers, thousands of dormant web sites will likely be updated again.
But some unlucky sites will never again feel a human touch. Come
Halloween, Thanksgiving, and yes, Christmas, they'll sojourn on,
unchanged -- digital shadows knowing no season, awaiting an FTP session
that will never occur.
These are the sites we call Ghost Sites: spectral members of the
Electronic Legion of the Damned.
*---- PLANET OASIS ----*
----- http://www.planetoasis.com/
A few years ago, people hypnotized themselves into thinking of
cyberspace as an actual "place", with actual compass points. Many sites
experimented with "map interfaces" -- the saner ones quickly gave them
up when users squawked about the tremendous GIFs required to convey a
simple navigational message like "Go Back".
Not the Planet Oasis site. This sprawling site, billing itself as "an
internet colony" has enough huge (100k to 300k) GIFs to stop a T1 in its
tracks. Its not hard to guess why Planet Oasis's streets are so empty:
all its colonists have choked to death on the bloated images.
What is the sinister force responsible for the desolate and airless
Planet Oasis? Sony? Disney? Moloch? All traces of authorship have been
erased from this site, suggesting a cable modem experiment that went
disastrously awry.
Related URLs:
http://www.planetoasis.com/cityview.html
http://www.planetoasis.com/Computers/index.html
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
*---- SPIV ----*
----- http://www.spiv.com/
When I first heard the tragic news that Turner Interactive's
youth-oriented Spiv site had been shut down, I immediately copied the
whole site to my hard drive, fearing that it would be unceremoniously
turned off and forever lost to historians. But miracle of miracles -- at
press time, Spiv continues to blithely float on as if the axe had never
fallen, like 2001's Discover spacecraft orbiting Jupiter with a dead
crew. Although Spiv's Movie Review remains half-alive, the rest of this
site has flat-lined.
A lot of hand-wringing speculation has accompanied the loss of Spiv. Is
Generation X no longer a fertile electronic market? Are web users sick
of "net culture" sites? Is the web dead?
The answer, of course, is that tax-paying Americans have had it up to
here with silly, absurd, and meaningless names beginning with the letter
"S" (i.e. Slate, Suck, Stim, etc.). The only exception to this rule is
the word "Sex", which will produce instant commercial success when used
on a web site.)
Admire Stim, I mean Spiv, while you can. You won't see it again in your
lifetime.
Related URLs:
http://www.spiv.com/roughcut/
[4 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, shows Advanced Decay
*---- ABSOLUT KELLY ----*
----- http://www.absolutvodka.com/
When hot air freezes, it crystallizes into a site like Absolut Kelly - a
joint venture between Hotwired and the Absolut Vodka Company. This
site's cryogenically-preserved core is a rambling pseudo-scientific book
written by Wired Executive Editor Kevin Kelly which reads like a woozy
New Age Dianetics Handbook. Savor these visionary chapter titles:
"Decentralized Remembering as an Act of Perception" and "A God Descends
Into His Polygonal Creation". How about "The Toilet: Archetype of
Tautology"?. (Would someone please pass me that vodka bottle?)
If sites like Absolut Kelly really reflect what Wired -- "the official
magazine of the digital revolution" -- honestly thinks is in store for
us on the Web, the future is indeed a chilly one, where a few screwy
bots provide the only action. On the other hand, hawking old remainder
books on a glossy web site and bottling this as "emergent wisdom" does
indicate a certain New Age genius.
Related URLs:
http://www.absolutvodka.com/ch2-d.html
http://www.absolutvodka.com/ch13-c.html
http://www.absolutvodka.com/ch7-c.html
http://www2.absolutvodka.com/cgi-bin/botbar
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, but Well-Preserved
*---- NET CHICK ----*
----- http://www.cyborganic.com/People/carla/
Who could fail to admire a progressive site like Net Chick, run by a
young woman named Carla Sinclair who's been widely described as "smart,
sexy, and computer-savvy" - just like the spunky Sandra Bullock
character in "The Net"? Unfortunately, Net Chick's self-promotional
content would make Narcissus blush: gobs of adulatory praise from
smitten fans, umpteen ways to buy Sinclair's book, and an oddly sexist
"dress up doll" game involving a partially-nude cartoon Carla.
Perhaps Net Chick is indeed "the only guide to stylish, post-feminist
modem grrrl culture", but if so, we can only wonder why this site's
"What's New" page was last updated in January. Maybe being smart and
sexy means you're always too busy to update your pages.
Related URLs:
http://www.cyborganic.com/People/carla/swellpeople.html
http://www.cyborganic.com/People/carla/book.html
http://www.cyborganic.com/People/carla/Rumpus/Toychest/Doll/
http://www.cyborganic.com/People/carla/whatsnew.html
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, but Well-Preserved
*---- CITY OF BITS ----*
----- http://www-mitpress.mit.edu:80/City_of_Bits/
Just as the first truckload of books about the Net often contained
nothing but lists, many first-generation web sites contained nothing but
links: tons of 'em!
City of Bits, a weighty tome published by MIT Press, might have made a
great coffee table book, but it's utterly dead as a web site, and hasn't
been updated since 1995.
Even though City of Bits is as stiff as a board, I found a wonderful
passage buried within this old electronic book which really stands the
test of time: "Sites in cyberspace do not live forever, so this list
will eventually become -- like the traces of a city that is no longer
inhabited -- a piece of digital archaeology." City of Bits is a
beautiful, stately ruin. May it attract many tourists (but not too many
smelly cats).
Related URLs:
http://www-mitpress.mit.edu:80/City_of_Bits/surf.html
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
*---- HOWARD RHEINGOLD'S BRAINSTORMS ----*
----- http://www.rheingold.com/
It's hard to avoid running into Howard Rheingold on the web. Like an
arrogant surfer who claims the entire beach as his own personal
property, Rheingold would have you believe that he single handedly
invented net "communities", personally coded the first hypertext, and is
still the only soul in the world who thinks the CDA was idiotic. As a
result of this sort of bravado, Rheingold is widely revered as a true
"deep-thinker". Trust me: any ideas that you have in your head were
already conceived, and probably already discarded, by Rheingold back in
1983.
Unfortunately, something terrible seems to have happened to Mr.
Rheingold's Brainstorms on or about June 2nd, 1996. That's when his
futurist "Tomorrow" tracts trail off into silence. The files in his
"roadshows" area haven't been refreshed anytime in 1996, nor has his
biography page been updated for a year or so.
To his credit, Rheingold at least explains why his site has become such
a ghost: he's been sucked away to form a new global publishing empire
funded by Japanese yen. Although it's unlikely, perhaps we can all
survive for a few months without benefit of his deathless wisdom.
Related URLs:
http://www.well.com/user/hlr/tomorrow/
http://www.well.com/user/hlr/roadshows/
http://www.well.com/user/hlr/howard.html
http://www.minds.com/taste.html
[2 GHOSTIES] Site is Dying in ICU
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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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