By this time I’m certain everybody whom this news is important to has heard that GeoCities will be closing down later this year (reports Yahoo!, who owns GeoCities).
With the closing of GeoCities there is the little death of a piece of the Internet. GeoCities has been around since 1994 and I think I was one of the first 3,000 people to sign up, I shit you not.
Way before Tripod or Angelfire I was dumping data on my GeoCities account, in an early attempt to organize net-connected music and counter-culture activists in the St. Louis scene. I was a freshman in high school and actively involved with anarchist and socialist circles in St. Louis, and used the birthing Internet as a way to connect with like-minded thinkers and activists all over the country; I set up a page for the St. Louis chapter of the Industrial Workers of the World, and my name can still be found littered in the source code as the mailto contact:
See the original page still hosted on “Capitol Hill” – link here. Check out all the links I made!
in 1996 I helped coordinate the General Assembly of the Wobblies in St. Louis and used the Internet as a primary form of communication with activists travelling to the city, and assisted with lodging, special diets, etc. By the time of the Assembly I think I had migrated everything to a hosted ($) account, but still maintained the GeoCities pages as a way for old incoming links to find their way forward. The Internet was there to help.
So when GeoCities shuts down and eventually purges all of those pages, a little bit of me will die with it.
It’s an odd feeling, but one must acknowledge that like all things in life, nothing lasts forever. and 15 years – more than half my life – is a good time for that one page to be online, alive! Since then I’ve lost three pets, numerous family members and friends, graduated college, lived abroad, and made love to a lady from nearly every continent (except Antarctica, but seriously, who is from Antarctica?)! So GeoCities I’ll sure miss you. You helped connect me and us and helped birth what eventually became this wonderful Internet of ours.
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The death of GeoCities also makes me reflect briefly on the “use” of the Internet. In 1996 a lot of people were hesitant to embrace the Internet as a tool or form of communication. Now we’d find it difficult to live without it. I’m thinking now of arguments by reactionaries against resources like Facebook, Twitter, even Flickr. Why do people resist what will only help aid them in their quest to organize people, develop an audience and a community, and eventually raise publicity and awareness and possibly even make some income along the way? Why?
GeoCities is Dead! Long Live GeoCities!