There will come a day when the Internet as we know it today will be no more.

I not placing any bets on exactly when that day will be. It could come next year, as Wired Magazine has predicted, with the demise of the World Wide Web. Or it could come in 10 years with the dawn of something even more impressive in its scope of information, some as-yet unknown technology, the next step in new media that will make our Internet an antique.

And when it happens there will be a slow but steady migration to embrace the new technology. The Web will be old hat, a childhood memory.

You'll know the exodus is complete when you start feeling pangs of nostalgia for places on the Web like Yahoo!

Gee, sometimes I miss the old days of having to actually point and click a mouse, and typing in those long and confusing addresses, you might say. It may have been slow, it may have been hit-or-miss technology -- but it was lovable.

You may even go so far as to break out that dusty old Pentium PC or that Power Macintosh -- remember when the biggest hard drive you could get was a gigabyte? -- and take a trip down old Memory Lane just to see if any of your favorite Web sites still exist.

Don't laugh. I'm positive I'm not the only person who has discovered a nearly-forgotten Atari 2600 video game or a Commodore 64 in the closet of a family home, and taken it for a spin. There's nothing like a great game of Space Invaders or Jumpman to bring back memories of being an awkward and introverted junior high schooler.

Not only will there be nostalgia, but there will be history to write about. Your children's college history and sociology professors, when they want to document the significant happenings of the mid to late 1990s will want primary source material to document their research findings.

But like the media of any other period, the Internet will have to be preserved for posterity.

That's where the Internet Archive will come in handy. The Archive is a California-based organization dedicated to preserving as much of the Internet as is possible on Digital Linear Tape. They figure it will take about a terrabyte of memory to do it, and so far they have collected about 200 gigabytes of information toward that end.

The organization is currently focused on documenting the Web-based activities surrounding the Presidential campaign, the first to include a large amount of Internet-based content. When the campaign is over, they will present their archive of Web sites to the Smithsonian Institution. That means our children and grandchildren will be able to see and giggle at Web-based campaign ads from the 1990s the same way we did at TV and radio ads from the other eras. And scholars will have a permanent record of this unique cultural force that has wound its way into so many lives in so short a time.

The Internet Archive is looking for people to help its cause, not financially, but through the donations of data and other advisory roles. If you're interested in learning more about it, check out the Web page first, then drop e-mail to frontdesk@archive.org.

He was a dissident artist in the Soviet Union who died ten years ago. His work premiered for the first time anywhere on the Internet-based magazine Moscow Channel. While giving Kovenatsky his first public showing, they are also testing the viability of the Internet as an on-line art gallery.

His black-and-white sketches are generally comical social and political commentaries on Soviet life with a very cynical edge to them. The works have been lauded by such artists as Art Speigelman, who is best known for his Maus series of comic books.

I highly recommend that you have a look at this site. You can find it at www.moscowchannel.com.

Send e-mail toArik Hesseldahl.

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