The Wayback Machine remembers the internet fondly

The Roman Library of Celsus in Turkey, among the most impressive in the ancient world and built to last, fell into desuetude after less than 200 years. (Wiki photo)

WHAT’S MORE ALIVE—LIBRARY stacks or the internet? Seems plain as day: The living one clamors and bleats. The one that’s dark and smells of mildew is dead.

But it hasn’t always been obvious. At the turn of the century, when the web was a wake for victims of dotcom crib death—Pets.com, eToys.com, gazoontite.com—it was a morbid place to be.

Occasionally it could seem alive, sure, as brush fires are alive. Bright, but not long for this world. No one knew if even Amazon and Priceline would survive, and they almost didn’t.

Grooved into the nervous systems of anyone who came of age in the ’80s and ’90s was also a persistent fear of disappearing data. “Computers” were identified with caprice. Everyone knew the ice-blood dread of having whole term papers disappear from MacWrite or Word. (You were cautioned not just to back up but to print, at every juncture.) Then came the hard lesson of the century’s end: Economies could vanish too. The crash of the dotcom market reinforced the impression that the internet was itself a soap bubble.