Are you aware of the fact that the internet is haunted?

Well ok, maybe not exactly haunted, but still there is a lot of dead stuff laying around. No, I'm not talking about the dead time we have all accumulated waiting for our lightning fast (or at least so advertised) net connections to finally kick in or the time we have idled away waiting for a file to download. Rather I'm talking about the dead cyber ventures that litter the information super highway. Incidentally, I am of the opinion that if anything around the net should be dead, it should be the buzz term 'information super highway'. That said you have my solemn oath it will never again fall from my keyboard.

Perhaps the 'dot-com entrepreneurial' explosion the world experienced not so long ago can best be compared to the gold rush days of yesterday year in America. In those former times slogans such as "Go west young man and seek your fortune" and "There is gold in them there hills!" rang in the ears of all those who would listen. Many a brave soul were tempted and many a brave soul took their chances in the vast unexplored territories that awaited them in the American west. Just as the few succeeded in the wilderness of old, a few have succeeded in the virtual electronic wilderness of today. As always - where you have success - you inevitably have failure. For the most part the strong, the smart, the innovative are the ones to survive. Sometimes those who are just plain lucky make it and those who truly seem to deserve success fall by the way side for some inexplicable reason.

Recently during a conversation with some associates it came up that someone really should be chronicling the comings and goings of net endeavors. Not the rise and fall of personal web pages but rather that of E-commerce, an electronic 'Boot Hill' if you will. Not necessarily a site that went into an in depth analyses, as to why these cyber ventures went under, but rather with the internet being the visual medium it is what they looked like at the end. I'm not sure where this train of thought comes from. Perhaps it's that 'slow down to look at the car crash' syndrome so many of us seem to be afflicted with.

Thus a few hours later, when I sat down at the computer the search began. Low and behold within 60 seconds I found exactly what I've been looking for at 'GHOST SITES'

GHOST SITES is the brain child of Steve Baldwin and made its debut as a project that he began in the summer of 1996

This site or (exhibit as he likes to refer to it) can perhaps best be explained in Baldwin's own words:

"This exhibit - The Museum of E-Failure - is an attempt to actively preserve the home pages of sites that will probably disappear in the next few months. Our goal is not to laugh at the fallen, but to preserve their last image, before all traces of these sites' existence are deleted from history's view. It is my hope that these screenshots may serve as a reminder of the glory, folly, and historically unique design sensibilities of the Web's Great Gilded Age. May no historical revisionists ever claim that this wacky period didn't happen - these screenshots prove that it did!"

I applaud Steves Museum of E-Failure. Indeed he does not laugh at the fallen. It is in fact safe to say he pays homage to the efforts of the authors whose failed endeavors he preserves. The truth being if it were not for these brave souls and the others like them the net would remain nothing more than a vast wasteland.