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Cave Drawings to Pop Up Ads

By Ophelia Chong
March 31, 2009
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The best and worst of what you see now is a reformulation of the best and worst that was.

The internet is built on the foundations of brick and mortar, of paper and ink, all the way back to cave paintings of spears and deers.

A quick list of what was and what is:

High School Reunions = Facebook.com
5¢ Peep Shows and Carnival Side Shows = YouTube.com
Mash notes = Twitter.com
Ye Olde Book Shoppe = Amazon.com
Classifieds = Craigslist.org
Your local library = Google.com
Your school locker = MySpace.com
The Soap Box in the town square = Blogging
The Yard Sale = eBay.com
Scrapbooks = Flickr.com
The Guy Who Owns the Comic Book Store = IMDB.com
Your Aunt = Match.com
Bygone Telephone Phone Monopolies = AOL.com and/or Yahoo.com
Cave Drawings = Pop Up Ads
Side Show Hawker = Spam

Send in your suggestions!
Adding to the list by commenters:
Ann: Mom reading you to sleep = Audible.com
Linda: World Book Encyclopedia = Wikipedia

Any website that says they are the "new" has to be taken with a grain of salt because it seeks to disregard the past by pretending to not take from it.

Image: Ophelia Chong / Why?

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