“Wayback Machine,” Internet Archive
This week’s readings were very focused on spatial characteristics associated with data and visualization mapping. Although temporal characteristics for this data must also be considered, there are often problems with the databases becoming too complex when factoring in both time and space. As a result, space is focused on and time is left to be secondary. Dunn mentions a problem with historical landmarks not being included in digital maps, and how this creates an unintended reconstruction of our notion of the past. Goodchild talks about the “airbrushing of history,” resulting from lack of real-time depictions of Earth’s surface in Google Earth. Gregory discusses geographical information systems’ favoring of spatial references within their databases. All of these articles about tools that prefer space made me think of a tool that relies on time: the Internet Archive’s “Wayback Machine.” The Wayback Machine is a search engine with a database of screen caps of a variety of websites, over the course of time. One can type in a URL, and the Machine shows the user a timeline of when this particular URL has been archived, and then it will show the user what this website looked like at that particular moment in time. Since websites are constantly changing in terms of usability, visuals, and content, the Wayback Machine allows a snapshot look into the past, through these documented and archived images of websites over time. For example, Google is a website that is very actively archived. With the Wayback Machine, I can see all the times it has been screen capped and view these. I can see what Google looked like in 1999, for example, and although the website isn’t interactive, I can get a sense of how it has evolved throughout the years. I think this is a very interesting tool because it archives the internet and documents its changes – changes that would otherwise go undocumented because previous versions are lost when a new design is implemented. It is a look into the past, into the “historical landmarks” that Dunn writes about that otherwise get lost in real-time digital mapping.