Olympic Madness
The Olympics on the web really annoys me. The main problem I have is that there’s no continuity. There should be, optimally, one site for the entire Olympics. That site should have information on all the modern games – going back to their reintroduction in 1896. You should not, under any circumstances need to use a list like this one to find information on past games.
I like Archive.org. I really do, don’t get me wrong – but you shouldn’t have to use it to pull up old Olympic homepages. It’s not like there has been a giant break in management here. Anyone putting in a moment’s thought would have known right away that those pages would be of enduring historical interest. So why, then, did they get junked? It’s certainly not the cost of maintaining a web presence. Practically every business, small or large, manages to do that. Realistically, the cost of maintaining these websites is insignificant compared to the other costs in running the IOC and the Olympic games.
Ultimately, I think the problem is one of foresight. Electronic media is naturally of such short duration that historic preservation is an afterthought. That’s really too bad, since it can lead us to forget our past, and without our past we can’t really tell where we’re headed with our future.
