Found History

Mark Fortner, an open source web developer who blogs at IdeaFactory, has stumbled upon a potentially useful new analytical construct for historians. In a post entitled “WTF Moments in Java History”, Fortner introduces the concept of the “WTF moment” in which contemporary observers and later analysts of historic events can only exclaim “WTF.” He writes: [...]

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New Stella Artois website uses brewer’s long history, period costumes to sell beer. See especially “L’Origine.” Science Fiction Timeline of Inventions. Learn when the taser, credit cards were first proposed as science fiction. The History of LOLCats from G4.

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Ye Olde Hipster. Merlin Mann claims Thomas Jefferson’s ivory pocket notebook as the “great-great-grandfather” of his own creation for Getting Things Done, the Hipster PDA. A History of Snowboarding in 2 Minutes Flat. (Via YouTube.) Happy New Year!

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Yesterday was supposedly the tenth anniversary of the coining of the word “blog.” These kinds of anniversaries (of terms, practices, social phenomena) make for very easy newspaper copy and very bad history. It’s obviously impossible to date the first time a word was spoken. But to the extent that these bogus birthdays get history into [...]

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Star Wars, the baroque version. Like steampunk, but older. (Via Old is the New New.)

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Here’s another one from the “Crunch” network of blogs. Today TechCrunch has a post on Apple’s 30th anniversary. While the post itself is not very interesting, many of the reader recollections solicited by the author and shared in the post’s comments section are. Currently there are nearly eighty. As our experience with Echo, the September [...]

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One of the things I keep stumbling upon are amateur software histories told through series of screenshots. Here are a couple examples. The first is a slideshow from ZDNet—which strictly speaking isn’t an amateur publication at all, although as far as history is concerned I think it’s close enough—that provides a look back at Windows [...]

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In 2012 the lights will go out in Toronto. Well, at least the incandescent lights. According to a new provincial directive, Ontario will ban Edison’s invention within five years, replacing more than 87 million incandescent blubs with compact flourescents, LEDs, and other, more energy efficient electric lights. Ontario follows Nunavut and Australia in banning the [...]

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Today Google marks the 46th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s space launch with another one of its commemorative logos. Clicking on it takes you to search results for “yuri AND gagarin”.

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It has been a while since I posted something in the Tops of All Time series, but I noticed two recent articles in PC World that fit the bill. The first is a wistful look back at the 10 Worst PCs of All Time. The second lists the 50 Best Tech Products of All Time, [...]

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