Eytan Adar, and others: The Web is ephemeral. Pages change frequently, and it is nearly impossible to find data or follow a link after the underlying page evolves. We present Zoetrope, a system that enables interaction with the historical Web (pages, links, and embedded data) that would otherwise be lost to time. Using a number of novel interactions, the temporal Web can be manipulated, queried, and analyzed from the context of familar pages. Zoetrope is based on a set of operators for manipulating content streams. We describe these primitives and the associated indexing strategies for handling temporal Web data. They form the basis of Zoetrope and enable our construction of new temporal interactions and visualizations.
From the archive: Hacks can express dissatisfaction with local culture or with administrative decisions, but mostly they are remarkably good-spirited. They are also by definition ephemeral.
Decius: On the one hand, the web is very much the human knowledge system. Often people who are maintaining parts of it don't respect that, and aren't economically incentivized to respect it ... On the other hand, the human memory is imperfect for good reason. People forget because if we remembered everything perfectly people would be constantly held accountable for things that they did years and years ago when they were very different people. People forgive and forget because people learn and mature. I fear we are heading for a world that is the worst of both.
Take note: Every culture has its own word for this nothing.
Stewart Brand and Freeman Dyson: Brand: How might long-term ethics differ from ethics as we generally understand them? Dyson: If you mean balancing the permanent against the ephemeral, it's very important that we adapt to the world on the long-time scale as well as the short-time scale. Ethics are the art of doing that. You must have principles that you're willing to die for.
Remember when: The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight Tuesday night.
Zoetrope: Interacting with the Ephemeral Web | 
