Yesterday we gave a talk about Digitak Folklore and our Geocities research in front of the highly competent audience at the New Museum in NY. A gentlemen approached us after to introduce his thoughts on c.gif, the tiny transparent graphic that is still online and on the same place as it’s always been, at http://www.geocities.com/clipart/pbi/c.gif.
He thought that it wasn’t just forgotten there, but left there on purpose, because all the Yahoo empire would collapse without it. Probably it is still used in the layouts of the company’s pages; deleting it would be like pulling out the critical block in the Jenga Tower. Good point! I can imagine it even more dramatic. If Yahoo deletes the c.gif the quake could be experienced all around the WWW. Who knows how many layouts outside of Geocities were and are built using it?