Bold efforts to record the entire Internet are expected to lead
to new services. Submitted to Scientific American for March 1997
Issue The early manuscripts at the Library of Alexandria were
burned, much of early printing was not saved, and many early
films were recycled for their silver content. While the
Internet's World Wide Web is unprecedented in spreading the
popular voice of millions that would never have been published
before, no one recorded these documents and images from 1 year
ago. The history of early materials of each medium is one of
loss and eventual partial reconstruction through fragments. A
group of entrepreneurs and engineers have determined to not let
this happen to the early Internet. Even though the documents on
the Internet are the easy documents to collect and archive, the
average lifetime of a document is 75 days and then it is gone.
While the changing nature of the Internet brings a freshness and
vitality, it also creates problems for historians and users
alike. A visiting professor