Preserving History: How the Internet Archive Promotes Literacy and Provides Increasingly Vital Stability in the Digital Realm
When it comes to safeguarding culture in a shifting information landscape, you can rely on the IA and the Wayback Machine to protect the past for tomorrow
In a world gone digital, combined with the rise of AI and the ability to share information (or misinformation) with just a few taps on a smartphone, much of what we, as a modern-day society, rely on can feel ephemeral and unreliable.
But history is not lost to us, thanks to the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine, which have been quietly and diligently recording the comings and goings of the World Wide Web since 1996. This 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization began building an archive of the internet to preserve seemingly temporal content and currently has more than twenty-nine years of web history accessible through the Wayback Machine.
According to its website, the Internet Archive includes 916 billion web pages, 49 million books and texts, 12 million audio recordings (including 268,000 live concerts), 10 million videos, 5 million images, and 1 million software programs — all free and readily accessible to the public.
The Wayback Machine uses web crawler programs to periodically capture and store copies of web pages. It was extremely helpful to me this past summer in my job as a content developer, when a major security breach rendered much of my employer’s website content inaccessible.
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When I realized I couldn’t access my old news stories during that time period, my supervisor guided me to the Wayback Machine, where I was able to paste the URL of my story page into the site and pull up a cached version to find the reference material I needed.
Over the course of the several weeks it took for the website breach to be fixed securely by our dedicated IT department, the Wayback Machine and I became very good friends. This resource helped me ensure I had the information I needed to craft my stories accurately and meet my deadlines.
There is evidence from other media outlets pointing to the increasing distrust of digital media.
With streaming services constantly shuffling and reshuffling content availability, physical media is becoming a hot commodity once again, according to Rolling Stone. The article mentions that consumers are becoming frustrated with films and series they love disappearing to other streaming platforms they do not pay for (or want to), and streaming providers routinely changing their pricing tiers and package deals.
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I had the experience where my version of Disney+ suddenly started showing ads in the middle of our movies because a “promotional” period of ad-free service had expired (I thought I had been paying for the ad-free service all along).
Vinyl records have been enjoying a revival, with LP sales outselling CDs in 2020 for the first time since the 1980s. Indeed, many current music artists are offering physical media options for their new albums as a matter of course, such as the popular LA-based Indie pop band Saint Motel, which has their latest album available on cassette, CD, and LP.
Combined with the rise of AI, which has prompted questions about the validity of everything from art to music, and society’s struggle to harness its power effectively and ethically, most Americans I know are just looking for something authentic.
While few of us are about to start printing off website pages, the Wayback Machine has aided in fighting censorship and maintaining continued access to certain Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) websites that were disabled this past January and February by the current federal administration. Some of them have been restored since, but not all — proving that the Internet Archive is an indispensable tool for protecting the history of our nation.
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The Internet Archive also serves as an online Open Library. People who do not have access to a public library or lack the means to get to a physical location have universal access to digital versions of books with a free Open Library card. Best of all, applying for the card is easy — all you need is an email address.
As for selection, according to the Internet Archive website, the organization scans 4,400 books per day in twenty locations around the world. That is a lot of books! If that wasn’t enough, a scanning service is also available to organizations that want to securely digitize their collections and provide open and free access as well as long-term storage. Find out more at [email protected].
Like the sound of free, reliable information for everyone? The Internet Archive offers volunteer positions to help keep its annals ticking along and expand the services of the Wayback Machine. If your time is at a premium, donations to help fund servers, staff, and preservation projects are always welcome.
Next time you find yourself at a dead end on the internet, visit your friend the Wayback Machine — you’ll be glad you did. In the wise words of noted author L. M. Montgomery: “Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.”
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