I had a couple of ideas for exploration, so I’ll post them both and see what people gravitate toward.

1.  Yahoo! closed down Geocities this past October.  In the 1990’s, Geocities was the introduction to webpage design for millions of users.  Its ease of use gave the average web citizen the chance to share vast amounts of new creative work.  Pictures, poetry, short stories and general ranting abounded alongside slews of “Under Construction” signs.  This talk would explore digital preservation concerns over the death of Geocities, and examine the tireless work of some creative individuals to preserve those documents.

The Internet Archive, Reocities, and Internet Archaeology are among the preservationists who took it upon themselves to save these early websites.  We could talk about how and why they achieved this, and perhaps have a fun look at some of what was saved.

2.  Over the summer, Amazon removed copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from users who had purchased them via the Kindle.  While Amazon apologized for their treatment of this copyright issue, the incident raises a number of questions.  What does personal ownership mean when it comes to digital works?  How will these issues evolve as electronic media devices become more prevalent?