Author Archives: Brewster Kahle

An Edition of One: US Theses and Dissertations on Microfilm

Posted on September 13, 2026 by Brewster Kahle

By Brewster Kahle and Claude Eugene Power inspecting microfilm. From the Internet Archive’s collections. Europe circulated its theses by printing each one by the hundred. America’s answer was the opposite: one typescript, one camera, and a company in Ann Arbor … Continue reading →

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The Great European Thesis Exchange

Posted on September 13, 2026 by Brewster Kahle

For a century, the universities of Europe ran a remarkable system for copying and circulating every dissertation they produced. Then the web arrived, and we quietly stopped. Here is that story — and pointing to how the Internet Archive Europe … Continue reading →

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How Far Did Vannevar Bush Get on the Memex?

Posted on July 26, 2026 by Brewster Kahle

The memex was never built — not even a lab prototype. But between 1938 and 1949 Vannevar Bush built and funded its component machines, two of which were real. How far each piece got, from sources in the Internet Archive collections. Continue reading →

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The Machine, the Law, and the Link: Bush, Binkley, Nelson

Posted on July 26, 2026 by Brewster Kahle

Vannevar Bush built the machine and ignored the rights. Robert Binkley fought the rights and had no machine. Ted Nelson designed both into one system — and the world shipped something else. One arc, from the Archive’s own shelves. Continue reading →

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Good-by to Gutenberg? Nope—Shrill Publisher Cries about the Xerox Machine Were Wrong

Posted on July 20, 2026 by Brewster Kahle

[written by claude.ai leveraging the new archive.org Supreme Court collection] Eight years before Jack Valenti called the VCR a “Boston strangler,” America’s publishers told the Supreme Court that the office copier would extinguish the printed word. A field guide to … Continue reading →

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Generative AI is a New Drug: Report on My First ‘Trip’

Posted on February 1, 2026 by Brewster Kahle

I now see how it can be addictive: A mindblowing experience and feeling like I see the world a bit differently. A feeling of being super smart and powerful. Getting lured in with free samples then everything costs. How it … Continue reading →

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Ethics Of Digital Librarianship (1992)

Posted on March 23, 2024 by Brewster Kahle

[This essay was included in every Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS) distribution as a way to instruct server operators (later to be called webmasters) on how to deal with log files. Software distributions can be found https://archive.org/details/freeWAIS-sf-1.0 I am proud of … Continue reading →

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My eBike Economics

Posted on February 7, 2023 by Brewster Kahle

I use an eBike to commute 2.5 miles to work most days. It is faster than driving and parking, and much cheaper than Uber/Lyft. A few details: Uber/Lyft costs $12 each way, so $5/mile Uber/Lyft takes 20 minutes: 10 minutes … Continue reading →

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Grace Lurton Miller 1928-2023

Posted on January 14, 2023 by Brewster Kahle

My dear aunt. Her poem, 1961.

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New account on Mastodon

Posted on November 24, 2022 by Brewster Kahle

The Internet Archive set up a Mastodon instance, and I created an account on it. Feels like a fresh new day. @brewsterkahle@mastodon.archive.org Mastodon

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