Support for LAist comes from
Audience-funded nonprofit news
Stay Connected
Audience-funded nonprofit news
Listen

Share This

NPR News

How do you create an internet archive of all human knowledge?

With our free press under threat and federal funding for public media gone, your support matters more than ever. Help keep the LAist newsroom strong, become a monthly member or increase your support today during our fall member drive. 

Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episode For All Eternity.

The internet is forever ... or is it? The average webpage is deleted or changed in just 100 days. To preserve all human knowledge — digital and analog — Brewster Kahle created the Internet Archive.

About Brewster Kahle

Support for LAist comes from

Brewster Kahle is an American digital librarian, computer engineer, inventor, and philanthropist, whose stated goal is "Universal access to all knowledge." In 1982 he helped start Thinking Machines, a supercomputer company specializing in text searching, and would go on to invent the internet's first publishing and distributed search system, WAIS, whose customers included the New York Times and the United States Senate.

Kahle is the founder and director of the Internet Archive, a free service that archives World Wide Web documents. In 2001, he implemented the Wayback Machine, which allows public access to the World Wide Web archive that the Internet Archive has been gathering since 1996. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT.

This segment of the TED Radio Hour was produced by James Delahoussaye and edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour and Manoush Zomorodi. You can follow us on Facebook @TEDRadioHour and email us at TEDRadioHour@npr.org.


Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

At LAist, we believe in journalism without censorship and the right of a free press to speak truth to those in power. Our hard-hitting watchdog reporting on local government, climate, and the ongoing housing and homelessness crisis is trustworthy, independent and freely accessible to everyone thanks to the support of readers like you.

But the game has changed: Congress voted to eliminate funding for public media across the country. Here at LAist that means a loss of $1.7 million in our budget every year. We want to assure you that despite growing threats to free press and free speech, LAist will remain a voice you know and trust. Speaking frankly, the amount of reader support we receive will help determine how strong of a newsroom we are going forward to cover the important news in our community.

We’re asking you to stand up for independent reporting that will not be silenced. With more individuals like you supporting this public service, we can continue to provide essential coverage for Southern Californians that you can’t find anywhere else. Become a monthly member today to help sustain this mission.

Thank you for your generous support and belief in the value of independent news.

Chip in now to fund your local journalism
A row of graphics payment types: Visa, MasterCard, Apple Pay and PayPal, and  below a lock with Secure Payment text to the right
(
LAist
)

Trending on LAist