This project is a few years old, but it might be appropriate to cover it late since [richardg867]’s Wayback Proxy is, quite literally, timeless.
It does, more-or-less, what it says as on the tin: it is an HTTP proxy that retrieves pages from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, or the Oocities archive of old Geocities sites. (Remember Geocities?) It is meant to sit on a Raspberry Pi or similar SBC between you and the modern internet. A line in a config file lets you specify the exact date. We found this via YouTube in a video by [The Science Elf] (embedded below, for those of you who don’t despise YouTube) in which he attaches a small screen and dial to his Pi to create what he calls the “Internet Time Machine” using the Wayback Proxy. (Sadly [The Science Elf] did not see fit to share his work, but it would not be difficult to recreate the python script that edits config.json.)
What’s the point? Well, if you have a retro-computer from the late 90s or early 2000s, you’re missing out a key part of the vintage experience without access to the vintage internet. This was the era when desktops were being advertised as made to get you “Online”. Using Wayback Proxy lets you relive those halcyon days– or live them for the first time, for the younger set. At least relive those of which parts of the old internet which could be Archived, which sadly isn’t everything. Still, for a nostalgia trip, or a living history exhibit to show the kids? It sounds delightful.
Of course it is possible to hit up the modern web on a retro PC (or on a Mac Plus). As long as you’re not caught up in an internet outage, as this author recently was.
“Everything” is a lot of ads.
All part of the experience.
I was browsing through a MacAddict issue from 1997 on Archive.org, and there was a little tidbit about a utility called “WebFree”. It was an adblocker in every sense of the word. I was surprised as I had no idea it was a thing that early. I guess we’ve always been desperate to escape “everything”.
I remember using a tool called the “Siemens Web Washer”. It ran as a local DNS or proxy (I wouldn’t have known the difference back then) and filtered out ads. It worked but not very well, I suppose it didn’t have access to a good quality ad server database.
For some reason I find ads to be more tolerable when the company that produced it no longer exists.
See also: compilation videos of 70’s 80’s and 90’s TV ads on youtube.
I had this exact idea about 10-12 years ago. Unfortunately didn’t have the scripting skills to implement it at the time. Still don’t.
I wound up on Geocities .ws, where I found my own 20-year old website being used to show offensive ads and try to load viruses on people :'(
I guess there is a 625GB torrent out there with all the geocities websites? Oocities does not have my site, and archive.org did not crawl it, just captured the landing page once with the picture and twice more without.
I’m pretty sure I backed up my site in a zip file and saved it by emailing it to myself XD
I had some websites I covertly hosted on Mac IIsis in a University of Virginia computer lab, where all the computers had static IP addresses! They were indexed by InfoSeek, though I think they predated Archive.org by a few years.
Better times.
Well, I do like the portability we have now. But static addresses and no social media! Better times.
Imagine being able to gather up your friends for a beer… via the unix talk daemon.
One problem with this experience is that it does not have an operational version of a time-appropriate search engine such as Lycos or HotBot. Get on it, hax0r2!
If only there was an archive of all the old ICQ and AIM chat logs. (yah, I know.. terrible privacy violation.)
Now train up an AI on it.
When we get old and senile the nurses at our nursing homes could dial a box to whatever year we think it is to talk to all our old friends in a blissful escape from the dark reality of those final years.
I’d be happy to take that if I make it that long.
Welp, there’s my dose of existential horror for today.
For the record, some of us have no problem at all with watching a YouTube video (once stripped of ads and tracking nonsense).
We despise trying to read an “article” that turns out to be a 2-paragraph partial summary of a video, with the video embedded below.