


----- GHOST SITES #4  [September 7, 1996]
----- by Steve Baldwin




With millions of aspiring webmasters returning to their university computers, thousands of dormant web sites will likely be updated again. But some unlucky sites will never again feel a human touch. Come Halloween, Thanksgiving, and yes, Christmas, they'll sojourn on, unchanged -- digital shadows knowing no season, awaiting an FTP session that will never occur. 

These are the sites we call Ghost Sites: spectral members of the Electronic Legion of the Damned.


*---- PLANET OASIS ----*
----- http://www.planetoasis.com

A few years ago, people hypnotized themselves into thinking of cyberspace as an actual "place", with actual compass points. Many sites experimented with "map interfaces" -- the saner ones quickly gave them up when users squawked about the tremendous GIFs required to convey a simple navigational message like "Go Back". 

Not the Planet Oasis site. This sprawling site, billing itself as "an internet colony" has enough huge (100k to 300k) GIFs to stop a T1 in its tracks. Its not hard to guess why Planet Oasis's streets are so empty: all its colonists have choked to death on the bloated images. 

What is the sinister force responsible for the desolate and airless Planet Oasis? Sony? Disney? Moloch? All traces of authorship have been erased from this site, suggesting a cable modem experiment that went disastrously awry. 

Related URLs:
   http://www.planetoasis.com/cityview.html
   http://www.planetoasis.com/Computers/index.html

[5 GHOSTIES]  Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum 


*---- SPIV ----*
----- http://www.spiv.com
 
When I first heard the tragic news that Turner Interactive's youth-oriented Spiv site had been shut down, I immediately copied the whole site to my hard drive, fearing that it would be unceremoniously turned off and forever lost to historians. But miracle of miracles -- at press time, Spiv continues to blithely float on as if the axe had never fallen, like 2001's Discover spacecraft orbiting Jupiter with a dead crew. Although Spiv's Movie Review remains half-alive, the rest of this site has flat-lined. 

A lot of hand-wringing speculation has accompanied the loss of Spiv. Is Generation X no longer a fertile electronic market? Are web users sick of "net culture" sites? Is the web dead? 

The answer, of course, is that tax-paying Americans have had it up to here with silly, absurd, and meaningless names beginning with the letter "S" (i.e. Slate, Suck, Stim, etc.). The only exception to this rule is the word "Sex", which will produce instant commercial success when used on a web site.) 

Admire Stim, I mean Spiv, while you can. You won't see it again in your lifetime. 

Related URLs:
   http://www.spiv.com/roughcut

[4 GHOSTIES]  Site is Dead, shows Advanced Decay 


*---- ABSOLUT KELLY ----*
----- http://www.absolutvodka.com

When hot air freezes, it crystallizes into a site like Absolut Kelly - a joint venture between Hotwired and the Absolut Vodka Company. This site's cryogenically-preserved core is a rambling pseudo-scientific book written by Wired Executive Editor Kevin Kelly which reads like a woozy New Age Dianetics Handbook. Savor these visionary chapter titles: "Decentralized Remembering as an Act of Perception" and "A God Descends Into His Polygonal Creation". How about "The Toilet: Archetype of Tautology"?. (Would someone please pass me that vodka bottle?) 

If sites like Absolut Kelly really reflect what Wired -- "the official magazine of the digital revolution" -- honestly thinks is in store for us on the Web, the future is indeed a chilly one, where a few screwy bots provide the only action. On the other hand, hawking old remainder books on a glossy web site and bottling this as "emergent wisdom" does indicate a certain New Age genius. 

Related URLs:
   http://www.absolutvodka.com/ch2-d.html
   http://www.absolutvodka.com/ch13-c.html
   http://www.absolutvodka.com/ch7-c.html
   http://www2.absolutvodka.com/cgi-bin/botbar

[3 GHOSTIES]  Site is Dead, but Well-Preserved 


*---- NET CHICK ----*
----- http://www.cyborganic.com/People/carla/

Who could fail to admire a progressive site like Net Chick, run by a young woman named Carla Sinclair who's been widely described as "smart, sexy, and computer-savvy" - just like the spunky Sandra Bullock character in "The Net"? Unfortunately, Net Chick's self-promotional content would make Narcissus blush: gobs of adulatory praise from smitten fans, umpteen ways to buy Sinclair's book, and an oddly sexist "dress up doll" game involving a partially-nude cartoon Carla. 

Perhaps Net Chick is indeed "the only guide to stylish, post-feminist modem grrrl culture", but if so, we can only wonder why this site's "What's New" page was last updated in January. Maybe being smart and sexy means you're always too busy to update your pages. 

Related URLs:
   http://www.cyborganic.com/People/carla/swellpeople.html
   http://www.cyborganic.com/People/carla/book.html
   http://www.cyborganic.com/People/carla/Rumpus/Toychest/Doll/
   http://www.cyborganic.com/People/carla/whatsnew.html

[3 GHOSTIES]  Site is Dead, but Well-Preserved 


*---- CITY OF BITS ----*
----- http://www-mitpress.mit.edu:80/City_of_Bits/

Just as the first truckload of books about the Net often contained nothing but lists, many first-generation web sites contained nothing but links: tons of 'em! 

City of Bits, a weighty tome published by MIT Press, might have made a great coffee table book, but it's utterly dead as a web site, and hasn't been updated since1995. 

Even though City of Bits is as stiff as a board, I found a wonderful passage buried within this old electronic book which really stands the test of time: "Sites in cyberspace do not live forever, so this list will eventually become -- like the traces of a city that is no longer inhabited -- a piece of digital archaeology." City of Bits is a beautiful, stately ruin. May it attract many tourists (but not too many smelly cats). 

Related URLs:
   http://www-mitpress.mit.edu:80/City_of_Bits/surf.html

[5 GHOSTIES]  Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum 


*---- HOWARD RHEINGOLD'S BRAINSTORMS ----*
----- http://www.rheingold.com

It's hard to avoid running into Howard Rheingold on the web. Like an arrogant surfer who claims the entire beach as his own personal property, Rheingold would have you believe that he single handedly invented net "communities", personally coded the first hypertext, and is still the only soul in the world who thinks the CDA was idiotic. As a result of this sort of bravado, Rheingold is widely revered as a true "deep-thinker". Trust me: any ideas that you have in your head were already conceived, and probably already discarded, by Rheingold back in 1983. 

Unfortunately, something terrible seems to have happened to Mr. Rheingold's Brainstorms on or about June 2nd, 1996. That's when his futurist "Tomorrow" tracts trail off into silence. The files in his "roadshows" area haven't been refreshed anytime in 1996, nor has his biography page been updated for a year or so. 

To his credit, Rheingold at least explains why his site has become such a ghost: he's been sucked away to form a new global publishing empire funded by Japanese yen. Although it's unlikely, perhaps we can all survive for a few months without benefit of his deathless wisdom. 

Related URLs:
   http://www.well.com/user/hlr/tomorrow/
   http://www.well.com/user/hlr/roadshows/
   http://www.well.com/user/hlr/howard.html
   http://www.minds.com/taste.html

[2 GHOSTIES]  Site is Dying in I.C.U. 


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