When we decided last week, in some kind of fit of pique, that this week would be Philly Internet History Week on Philebrity, we did so half-jokingly. Would there even be enough to fill up a whole week? Turns out, there’s more than enough. What started as a list of 10 or so posts has quickly blossomed into a list of over 50, and growing. (Click here for info on how to submit your own tale for consideration.)
But surely you can understand our surprise. As anyone who’s ever worked in the web sector and lived in Philly would know, our city does not exactly have a rep as being a hub for the new frontier. But the more we heard people’s stories and began to piece together a portrait of Philadelphia’s first shots across the web, the more we realized that this was really a misnomer; that for well over a decade now, people in Philly have been boldly planting various flags in different corners of the Internet to see if they’d hold.
Since famously, not much does hold in this new soil, there obviously will be many stories of Stuff That Is No Longer Here this week. But there’s also plenty that’s still around, plenty of things that are happening, and plenty of knowledge of the past that can be tucked away for use in Philly’s Internet future. Over the next five days, we’ll be posting stories of Philly’s Internet History, told by both those who were there and our own staff, in a somewhat random order; next week, after it’s all over, we’ll construct a proper timeline. But for now, let the stories be told: Philly, this is your Internet History. Yes, you have one!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 12:04 pm.