A Time Capsule for the Web ⇥ kottke.org

Tim Carmody in a guest post on Kottke:

More than ever, what the web serves up on its own is the very worst things that have just happened. It’s an active shooter livestreaming a snuff film on Facebook — or something not as bad, but not much better.

And hey, focusing on very recent, very bad news makes a lot of sense. If there are awful things happening right now, I want to know about them. If some overpaid someone wrote something stupid and everyone I know is slamming it on Twitter, I want to get in on it. We’re only human.

But sometimes, I wonder, with all the abundance and ephemerality of the web, whether we indulge the opposite impulse enough. I don’t mean sharing more new things that are funny, or heartwarming, or relatable. I mean going out and finding or rediscovering the things that are The Very Best We Have to Offer, gathering them together, and saving them, forever.

I love the idea of this project. It’s simple to participate — you just have to fill out a short questionnaire, and not every question needs an answer.

Something that Carmody hasn’t addressed, as far as I can see, is what how he’ll present the final product. I hope that the results show an earnest attempt at finding the best of the web, but I also foresee the potential for abuse. What does that editing process look like, and what is the result? I’m not being a pessimistic skeptic here; I’m intrigued.

Update: Carmody has shared a collection of the best tweets nominated by readers so far.