Nothing Found

Once a thriving and highly distributed metropolis of citizens and users from all ages and backgrounds, Geocities found itself in the space of less than a decade outdated, accused of nostalgia and of an infantile history better forgotten. The aesthetics and customs that had evolved in parallel were no longer capable of tolerating its presence.

In April 2009 an announcement was posted online. Yahoo! a once benevolent landowner of this kingdom had chosen to purge every settlement without exception – eradicating without a moment of thought for preservation an entire culture. Leaving in its wake but a few caring and diligent librarians with the task of urgent preservation.

Efforts still continue to this day to restore and maintain the fragments of this once thriving civilisation most notably ArchiveTeam, Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied and InternetArchaeology.org.

In New York City on September 15th 2008 the sun rose at 6:36 AM EDT. The morning was met with clear skies, which were only interrupted in the late afternoon by a few scattered clouds. Average temperatures were around 23 °C.

“With a long-established reputation for excellence, we are one of the pre-eminent franchises in the global equity markets. Our expert team of traders, salespeople and origination specialists has built success by forming strong client partnerships based on our ability to provide the highest quality execution and distribution. Our traditional strengths in fundamental, quantitative and strategic research continue to provide the competitive advantage our clients seek.

Throughout 2007, we made significant progress in executing our growth and diversification strategy — balanced investments across regions, segments and products. For the fifth consecutive year, Lehman Brothers ranked #1 in Institutional Investor’s U.S. equity research poll in 2007. We are developing a tradition of firsts: no other firm has achieved a #1 ranking in both Equity and Fixed Income research in the same year, and we have now done it five years running.

We continue to invest in our infrastructure, enhancing our trading platforms and ensuring the highest risk management standards.”

Trashed in deep time the Silk Road or Silk Route played host to an eclectic composition of travellers, merchants, pilgrims, monks, soldiers, libertarians, nomads, crypto-anarchists and urban dwellers. It’s path ground the earth below it’s feet for centuries before its inevitable decay in the face of collapsing empires; accelerated by the integration of territorial states, the onset of mercantilism and trade’s recession into the high seas.

Whilst it’s spirit lay dormant for centuries, the emergence of new and grotesque faultlines in the empires and civilisations that had arisen in its wake signalled the possibility of a revival. As the regulatory frameworks of the Nation States began to crumble and buckle in the opening decade of the 21st century under the pressure of new routing possibilities and the ideology of frontier networks.

The Silk Road resurfaced from it’s slumber in 2011 as a borderless territory, operating  from within and between empires. Acting in ode to the moment in which the speed of light had not only transformed the world but had become the world.

Stewarded at the discretion of the Dread Pirate Roberts the Silk Road’s first attempts at reincarnation suffered a premature death after 2 years, due in part to a centralised engineering error made on the part of DRP’s living avatar Ross William Ulbricht, who was arrested and jailed for life in 2015.

Seemingly smashed and displaced by the cathedral the Silk Road resolved this initial conflict and the prospect of continual persecution through the embodiment of a hydralike form that submerged itself in the deep web.

Sometimes individuals can take actions that have ramifications for others, and perhaps more acutely impact the direction of future thought, if only in relation to their absence.

I remember the first time I chanced across the spirit surfers manifesto, its tacit references to an almost forgotten place free from e-commerce and capable of sketching a now alien process of deep searches without roads or  highways. Even then though it reeked of an acceptable nostalgia for that short period in which some of us as teens were locked in our bedrooms staring into the screen, lost in the desert.

Invoking Hieronymus Bosch and Joseph Cornell with a richness and deeper set of thoughts, there’s a sense that what has followed years after could have perhaps been averted, were it not for Bewersdorf’s decisive erasure of his own material history.