“20 years of Usenet archives, more than 700 million messages dating back to 1981. […] a fascinating first-hand historical account.” Damn skippy.

Allow me to take this as an opportunity to harp on one of my pet topics, the future of history, as a science, which it now is. The link itself lists a short timeline of articles of historical import, from Challenger to the Berlin Wall, but the greatest overall impact on history will be found in the mundane. To justify that last statement, in short: the future of history is here, it’s not going away, and its memory is more complete than not. That which is not recorded is the exception. The ‘lens of history’ can now focus so fine, a stray photon passing through it could probably obliterate a small moon. And guess what? You’re a part of it. Every single little thing you publish on the internet will, much more likely than not, live forever. Ain’t that just trippy as hell?

And of course, lest we forget those historical events which are really important, the very first ever use of ‘blog’ as a contraction of ‘weblog’ on Usenet.