The web is almost 20 years old now. Throughout these years, it has transformed from a new medium to new media in the best very sense of the word – it continues to evolve. Its “stupidity”, its neutrality, which lies at the core of internet architecture, allows it to continue to grow but without ever really growing old or mature.

Dealing with an eternally young medium means that we always have to deal with something new – technically as well as ideologically and aesthetically. It means that the dying of web pages, users or services is seen as a natural process. And it makes no sense to speak of a project reaching middle age, because age has no value here. Getting old is something that you don’t do on the net.

The Geocities archive provides us with the experience of getting old. Coming into contact with aged pages is an important lesson that defies the impression that on the net, everything always happens in the present.

Ruins and Templates of Geocities is the first chapter of the publication Still There. It is based on this blog’s posts tagged with “ruins”, “templates” and “alive”.