Dusting away the cobwebs of the historical mind

What a curious notion it is to be digging around the archives of my psychological history and revisiting a period of my past long consigned to the lost parts of my life.

An odd notion it is indeed that the period that has come around again isn't the 2010's reflection of the 80's or the 2k take on the 70's is instead a focus on the period of time when decades stopped having meaning in reality, instead reflecting periods on social change. Not the changes of how we interact in person, but in the means of interaction. Those heady days of live journal and geocities, or yahoo groups (or was it clubs?).

I suppose by revisiting the Myspace age through our modern social media eyes really is telling. Skipped are the early message boards, personal visitor books,  and html Frankensteins of geocities. The garbled messes of teens home-made websites filled with animated scrolling sprites and midi renditions of "hit me baby once again". We wipe away that awkward phase of the historical internet and dive into the first true point of social media dominance.

Like discovering an old stone milepost on a track through the woods. Your friend has found this oddity and thinks we should renovate it for use by future generations. "They don't make things like this any more, but they are still good" he says.

Obviously there's the risk that the restoration might be performed by a near-sighted 85-year-old with the best of intentions and the worst of knowledge.

I do wonder what teen users of this place will think. I suppose it must be like listening to Genesis (the band and not a reading of genesis) in the year 2021. ... Gabriel not Collins...

A digital restoration of the lamb.

Time to them having been so distorted, the original feeling like it was 40 generations ago and not simple a handful of years as it is in reality. Then that is what time is like, once you get to an age to realize the terrible truth of time, or your perception of it. I am still only nineteen really, even if my body doesn't feel it.

For someone who planned to live to one hundred and thirty, being faced with a moulded replica of how things used to be can be quite the shock to the system. But also, a good thing to do once in a while. You don't get to understand where you are, where you're going, how you have changed, without really facing where you've been.

Like taking up an old hobby. Sometimes it can be a good thing.

Now where's my old folder of Simpsons sprites?