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The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

lil.law.harvard.edu

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Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#2

Post by krallja »

The Million Dollar Homepage is not decaying (it is still serving its million dollar purpose) - it is the Web itself that has decayed. The brittleness of URIs is on full display. "Cool URLs don't change," but most of these URLs were never cool: they had to rent coolness from Internet cool kid Alex Tew.

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#4

Post by brosky117 »

I just heard about the "Million Dollar Homepage" for the first time last week. Would this idea (or one like it) work today? Making a million dollars for something so bizarre, fun, and straightforward sounds amazing. Can anyone reference other attempts at similar ideas?

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#5

Post by resf »

Decaying in more than one way. The JS files on milliondollarhomepage.com start with:

    /*
         FILE ARCHIVED ON 5:47:20 Aug 6, 2015 AND RETRIEVED FROM THE
         INTERNET ARCHIVE ON 20:45:17 Aug 24, 2015.
         JAVASCRIPT APPENDED BY WAYBACK MACHINE, COPYRIGHT INTERNET ARCHIVE.
    
         ALL OTHER CONTENT MAY ALSO BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT (17 U.S.C.
         SECTION 108(a)(3)).
    */
I guess someone didn't keep backups?

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#6

Post by voltagex_ »

resf wrote: post #5

Decaying in more than one way. The JS files on milliondollarhomepage.com start with: /* FILE ARCHIVED ON 5:47:20 Aug 6, 2015 AND RETRIEVED FROM THE INTERNET ARCHIVE ON 20:45:17 Aug 24, 2015. JAVASCRIPT APPENDED BY WAYBACK MACHINE, COPYRIGHT INTERNET ARCHIVE. ALL OTHER CONTENT MAY ALSO BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT (17 U.S.C. SECTION 108(a)(3)). */ I guess someone didn't keep backups?

Or just a way to shore up dependencies

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#7

Post by krallja »

brosky117 wrote: post #4

I just heard about the "Million Dollar Homepage" for the first time last week. Would this idea (or one like it) work today? Making a million dollars for something so bizarre, fun, and straightforward sounds amazing. Can anyone reference other attempts at similar ideas?

Initial Coin Offerings are bizarre, fairly straightforward and can be fun.

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#8

Post by graphitezepp »

brosky117 wrote: post #4

I just heard about the "Million Dollar Homepage" for the first time last week. Would this idea (or one like it) work today? Making a million dollars for something so bizarre, fun, and straightforward sounds amazing. Can anyone reference other attempts at similar ideas?

It's just a random example of something silly going viral. Stuff like this definately could work today (potato salad kickstarter was a thing) but any individuals attempt probably wouldn't work, it mostly comes down to luck.

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#9

Post by zzalpha »

krallja wrote: post #7
brosky117 wrote: post #4

I just heard about the "Million Dollar Homepage" for the first time last week. Would this idea (or one like it) work today? Making a million dollars for something so bizarre, fun, and straightforward sounds amazing. Can anyone reference other attempts at similar ideas?

Initial Coin Offerings are bizarre, fairly straightforward and can be fun.

Bizarre I'll give you.

Fun, well, that's a matter of taste so I won't debate you there.

But "fairly straightforward"? Let's not get crazy, here. IMO, ICOs are doing to cryptocurrency what derivatives did to traditional investing. Abstraction, indirection, and confusion, all to make a buck...

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#10

Post by URSpider94 »

krallja wrote: post #2

The Million Dollar Homepage is not decaying (it is still serving its million dollar purpose) - it is the Web itself that has decayed. The brittleness of URIs is on full display. "Cool URLs don't change," but most of these URLs were never cool: they had to rent coolness from Internet cool kid Alex Tew.

It's a frame of reference problem. Note that this article is published by a library research group. One of the hottest topics in library science is how to archive and reference the WWW. While it's entirely valid to view the Million Dollar Web Page as a decaying artifact (let's call this the Art Critic view), it is also possible to view it as an archaeological record that needs its links to be complete (let's call this the archaeologist view).
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