Cory Doctorow coined the word ENSHITTIFICATION & learned that a minor license to vulgarity can be a key to getting people interested in abstract technical questions.
On the Future Knowledge #podcast, he explains what the word means, why the web became frustrating & hostile to users, & how we can make it work for people again.
🎧
Listen & subscribe ⬇
️
https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/enshittification
@internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org @AuthorsAlliance@mastodon.social
Mosaic was the first web browser to hit the mainstream in 1993, built by NCSA at Illinois. 🌐
It integrated text, images, data, audio & video, sparking a web boom. Not the first browser, but the one that made the web usable for millions. Its legacy? Every browser since.
Visit its old website using your modern browser using the #WaybackMachine ⤵
️ https://web.archive.org/web/19961220041605/http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/NCSAMosaicHome.html
#Wayback1T #InternetHistory
This World AIDS Day, we honor the voices and activism that shaped the global fight against HIV/AIDS. "Victory Deferred"—a defining history of the crisis by journalist John-Manuel Andriote—is now an open access edition, free for all to read on the Internet Archive: https://blog.archive.org/2025/12/01/a-landmark-history-of-the-aids-crisis-is-now-free-for-all-to-read/
Planning your week? Add this #booktalk to the list. 📖
Samuel Moore & Heather Joseph explore PUBLISHING BEYOND THE MARKET & how collective, scholar-led publishing can reshape open access.
Co-hosted with Authors Alliance.
📆
Thurs Dec 4th
🕙
10 AM PT / 1 PM ET
📍
Online
🎟
️ https://blog.archive.org/event/book-talk-publishing-beyond-the-market-with-samuel-moore/
@AuthorsAlliance@mastodon.social @Samuelmoore@hcommons.social @hjoseph@mastodon.social
"Black Friday" predates shopping deals. The term originally referred to the 1869 U.S. financial panic & stock market crash.
Black Friday is also a 1904 novel by Frederic S. Isham, inspired by those events. A 1916 silent film adaptation was made, but may be lost.
📖 Read the #publicdomain novel ➡
️ https://archive.org/details/blackfriday00ishaiala
#BlackFriday
Family cookbooks, filled with handwritten notes, sometimes held together with little more than rubber bands, tell the story of generations of homemakers. Easily lost, they are irreplaceable treasures.
🦃
This #Thanksgiving, celebrate the cultural & family histories on their worn & stained pages ➡️ https://blog.archive.org/2024/09/30/vanishing-culture-preserving-cookbooks/
#VanishingCulture
The Winged Monkeys in Baum’s Oz weren’t followers of the Wicked Witch – they were compelled by the magical Golden Cap, which could summon them three times.
The Witch used it first, then Dorothy, who had them carry her friends across Oz. Mischievous rather than evil, they obeyed only the commands given.
Glinda the Good later gave them three final tasks and handed the cap to their King, freeing them forever. 🐒
🪽
🐒🪽More Oz in the #publicdomain ⤵️
https://blog.archive.org/2025/11/17/the-wonderful-public-domain-of-oz/
#Oz #Wicked
We are back. Our provider found and repaired a fiber issue last night and traffic has returned. We are sorry for the disruption.
Status update: fiber cut between data centers - trucks are rolling. Services are slow but functional, except for the Wayback Machine, which is still offline.
The Wayback Machine, openlibrary.org, and some other archive.org functions are offline because some network gear has failed.
We apologize and are working on it. More as it happens.
internetarchive