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Hi everyone!
As some of you know, I've long-held an idea called The Chronovisor, which would let me look back through old and dead sites... Art Bell's site, TOTSE.com, Time Travel Portal, Anomalies.net, one called Blackout.com my brother and I used to hang out on, and many many others. You've probably got a host of your own "sites that got away" in the back of your mind, too.
The internet is ephemeral, sites move on and people get interested in other things. We've got the Wayback Machine which is a magic unto itself, but it has its limitations. You can visit an old forum that way any time you like, but good luck actually finding anything. This is an annoyance I've been trying to solve for a while, and I finally figured out I just needed to learn a little more code.
Clicking a record reveals a plaintext preview:
What I've built is a toolchain that does the following:
Full details can be found here:
bbs.timetravelinstitute.com
The search engine is the first half of the equation. and then the other half is restoring the best and most interesting items from this dataset so it's more easily discoverable. Within TTI, each project has its own section where we'll put together a kind of internet archeology museum to bring early fringe/paranormal subculture back from the depths and provide a resource for people interested in these things.
In prior attempts, I was trying to bring ALL of the content in post by post, but there's just one me and 2.2 million records I'm interested in. One idea was to crowd source some of this, but that's time marketing and not discovering. With this approach, I'm flipping the funnel and building a way to target what's deserving of being restored. I'm also using this to help curate a database of Enigmas, and provide as much information about each mystery as I can from what this project is able to unearth.
There's so much forgotten or lost conversation and story, and as someone who grew up watching these sites come and go, this feels pretty close to time travel for someone like me.
Anyhow, I thought some of you would get a kick out this and maybe have some ideas for domains to add to the dataset. I'm happy to answer questions and I'll share where you guys can try the search engine out when it's ready
As some of you know, I've long-held an idea called The Chronovisor, which would let me look back through old and dead sites... Art Bell's site, TOTSE.com, Time Travel Portal, Anomalies.net, one called Blackout.com my brother and I used to hang out on, and many many others. You've probably got a host of your own "sites that got away" in the back of your mind, too.
The internet is ephemeral, sites move on and people get interested in other things. We've got the Wayback Machine which is a magic unto itself, but it has its limitations. You can visit an old forum that way any time you like, but good luck actually finding anything. This is an annoyance I've been trying to solve for a while, and I finally figured out I just needed to learn a little more code.
Clicking a record reveals a plaintext preview:
What I've built is a toolchain that does the following:
- Collect all known good URLs from the Wayback CDX
- Scrape those for titles and plaintext content
- Scrape those again to generate fullscreen images and PDFs
- Compile those into one dataset
- Make them searchable through an interface
Full details can be found here:
Introducing the Chronovisor
Explore the digital past with the Chronovisor project on the Time Travel Institute. Cosmo unveils a journey through iconic forums and websites, celebrating a legacy of fringe science and internet culture. Rediscover, celebrate, and dream with us.
bbs.timetravelinstitute.com
The search engine is the first half of the equation. and then the other half is restoring the best and most interesting items from this dataset so it's more easily discoverable. Within TTI, each project has its own section where we'll put together a kind of internet archeology museum to bring early fringe/paranormal subculture back from the depths and provide a resource for people interested in these things.
In prior attempts, I was trying to bring ALL of the content in post by post, but there's just one me and 2.2 million records I'm interested in. One idea was to crowd source some of this, but that's time marketing and not discovering. With this approach, I'm flipping the funnel and building a way to target what's deserving of being restored. I'm also using this to help curate a database of Enigmas, and provide as much information about each mystery as I can from what this project is able to unearth.
There's so much forgotten or lost conversation and story, and as someone who grew up watching these sites come and go, this feels pretty close to time travel for someone like me.
Anyhow, I thought some of you would get a kick out this and maybe have some ideas for domains to add to the dataset. I'm happy to answer questions and I'll share where you guys can try the search engine out when it's ready
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