What is your favorite Arca Portal currently?
Vintage Articles is one of my smaller Portals, but it contains some gems. I hope to spend more time growing it in the coming weeks.
There's something compelling about reading stories where we know the ending. It's like a time machine.
Now, AOL Everywhere (1999) for the New York Times is one of my favorites in the collection. AOL executives were so busy investing all this money expanding into global markets and signing expensive content deals that they hadn't noticed the cliff ahead. At the turn of the century, AOL was the largest tech company in the world. However, its infrastructure still relied on dial-up connections. The increasingly more accessible broadband Internet was faster, cheaper, and most importantly, it didn't rely on the home's phone line to work.
As you read the article, you realize that these knuckleheads are clueless about what will happen to them. They talk about AOL's future as if it were destined to be the next Disney. You want to shout at them. You want to grab them through your screen by their Brooks Brother's button-downs— Broadband is about to eat your lunch!
The hubris. It's almost too much to bear. But, of course, what was done is done.
AOL did not carry with it the internet's openness ethos, so it's probably a good thing the company failed. But where the web is today, AOL's shenanigans feel almost quaint. You can't help but wonder what our digital lives would be like if America Online had survived as the de facto internet. It would probably still be pretty bad. I don't know. No one has ever accused me of being an optimist.
There's something compelling about reading stories where we know the ending. It's like a time machine.
Now, AOL Everywhere (1999) for the New York Times is one of my favorites in the collection. AOL executives were so busy investing all this money expanding into global markets and signing expensive content deals that they hadn't noticed the cliff ahead. At the turn of the century, AOL was the largest tech company in the world. However, its infrastructure still relied on dial-up connections. The increasingly more accessible broadband Internet was faster, cheaper, and most importantly, it didn't rely on the home's phone line to work.
As you read the article, you realize that these knuckleheads are clueless about what will happen to them. They talk about AOL's future as if it were destined to be the next Disney. You want to shout at them. You want to grab them through your screen by their Brooks Brother's button-downs— Broadband is about to eat your lunch!
The hubris. It's almost too much to bear. But, of course, what was done is done.
AOL did not carry with it the internet's openness ethos, so it's probably a good thing the company failed. But where the web is today, AOL's shenanigans feel almost quaint. You can't help but wonder what our digital lives would be like if America Online had survived as the de facto internet. It would probably still be pretty bad. I don't know. No one has ever accused me of being an optimist.
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