22.37, Monday 22 May 2000

Here's the thing: I've only been on the www since late 1996; I didn't really start noticing repeated names until last year. There's years of history I've missed out on. Hell, there's years of history millions of people have missed out on - and that's a damaging thing: We're repeating ourselves. Not just reinventing the wheel with protocols and design tricks, but artistically too. And archives aren't enough. So this is what I'm after: A cultural history of the web. Stories of how the metaphors for how to relate to the www came into being. The people. Mainly, the people - and what they did and who remembers what and the communities and the fights. Usenet has such things (I wish I knew where to look right now, but I've run across them in the past I'm sure) but Usenet's archived anyway.

And if such a multithreaded story doesn't exist, here's what I want to do: Set up a space where people can say what happened. Set it along a timeline, and make it possible to follow a single person's story. Link people together so we can find how communities evolved. Invite people to look back at their email from a month in the early 1990s and tell us what was exciting the, what was exciting the web.

This is the second good idea for a site I've had today*. It's going to be a busy Summer.