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April 15, 2005

by Steve Baldwin

1998-2004 Screenshots
(First upload 01/29/2001, collection consolidated 04/20/2004)


 

WHAT IS THE MUSEUM OF E-FAILURE?
This feature of Ghost Sites was launched in early 2000; it is an image gallery of some 1,250 screens captured from some 900 Web projects that for various reasons "went dark" during the years 1998 to 2004. Some had a chance to post a self-penned epitaph in the form of a "farewell screen"; others simply expired and drifted lifelessly, with no visible indications for their demise - often for many months. This collection provides a partial, but revealing look at the latter half of the Web's 10 years of existence. Annotations (Web Elegies) are included where possible in order to place each site in its historical context.

Unlike the far more extensive collection of historical material located at Archive.org's excellent Wayback Machine site, the sites in this collection are not working replicas, but screenshot recordings made (using the time-honored "ALT-PRINT-SCRN" method) when the site was still running, a technique allowing the preservation of dynamic elements, including banner advertisements, Java and Javascript, and streaming media in a way not always possible with the WayBack machine. It is hoped that this exhibit - a sample of cultural product created by the dotcom era's lost wunderkind - provides some small iota of insight into the Web's possibly central role in the future history of Dead Media.

Ghost-o-Meter

You're on the web a lot. You've seen many a dead site. You've forgotten our email address... and you don't feel like coming back here to get it.

What do you do?

Ghost-o-Meter
(javascript required)

The Ghost-o-Meter opens a small, movable window... if you've found a Ghost Site, fill in the blanks, fire it off, and go back to foolin' around. Its that easy. (Note: I detest spam gangsters as much as you do, don't save or sell e-mail addresses, and will never compromise your privacy.)

You can also use this form:


FORGOTTEN WEB CELEBRITIES

Jennicam.org's Jennifer Ringley
PsychoExGirlFriend.com's Mark McElwain
Lunch Menu Man's Dave Price

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MOLDIER (2003) TEXT
Unemployment Journal / Real Ghosts! / The Education of Mike Daisey / On Top of the World / Jayson Blair: Dot-Com Reporter? / More On Shlubby Tech Journalists / Axes, Swords, Guns and Nukes / Cyberbegging: What Works, What Doesn't / Dead Logo Animation /

LOST IN THE E-FLOTSAM?
If you are seeking paranormal phenomena of the physical kind, Tom Clancy's ghost recon or PDF interpreters? Sorry - click the prior links or hit your browser's 'back' button. The "ghosts" you'll find here are of the virtual variety - star-crossed collections of HTML and Javascript that haunted the noosphere long after their all-too-human creators turned their backs on them. These crewless, drifting cyber-wrecks often drifted for months, sometimes years, in enigmatic silence, before disappearing from public view. But many did not vanish before their creators were able to draft an "SOS" of some kind. This message - visible on the "farewell screens" you'll see below, represents the last testament of the site's administrator - an attempted summation of the site's purpose and destiny.

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What the ??!

Well, this is all very interesting, but what the heck is Ghost Sites anyway? Why devote a live site to Dead Sites?

If you're interested in this Ghost Sites thing, it is a project that I began in the summer of 1996 while I was working for Time-Warner's Pathfinder. Late in the evening of July 4th, while piloting a small craft across Long Island Sound, I had what only can be described as an epiphany.

From out of the depths came a cruel vision of the World Wide Web. It wasn't a friendly place - an innocent place of community, commerce and chat. It was a great and utterly pitiless electronic ocean that swallowed up sites, careers, and venture capital like a ravenous killer whale. Great sites - sites like Mecklerweb and iGuide - were going down with all hands. Great fortunes were collapsing and proud content sites lay wrecked on the bottom. No one seemed to care. The future was a vast abyss - who would record these days of New Media folly, disaster and despair?

Back on shore, but still haunted by this vision, I launched Ghost Sites as a modest attempt to document the great disappearing fleet of web sites sinking beneath the waves. This project briefly made me spectacularly famous, and then I was quickly, and completely forgotten.

By March of 1997, Ghost Sites had succumbed to the same deadly entropy that had settled over the Internet, and became a crewless wreck itself. For six cruel months, it drifted like a despised garbage barge, broke its keel in a summer squall, and finally washed up on Geocities.

On an icy November morning, Morbus boarded the wreck, inspected the damage, and offered the captain a safe harbor. The bilge pump was started, and the squealing, rusty hull lifted off the sands again. It soon arrived here - in the dark, unquiet waters of Disobey.Com.

If you have a favorite rotting site that you'd like to mention, email me at Steve_Baldwin@hotmail.com.

Ghost Sites has appeared in a number of places including Time Magazine, ZDNet, The Netly News and more. For a list of all those we know of, as well as links to online counterparts, click here. You can also take a look at the limited edition t-shirt we once offered. Or buy a new one online.

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Text issues? Click here.
Web issues? Click here.



 

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