“Every time a light blinks, someone is uploading or downloading,” Kahle explains. Six hundred thousand people use the Wayback Machine every day, conducting two thousand searches a second. “You can see it.” He smiles as he watches. “They’re glowing books!” He waves his arms. “They glow when they’re being read!”

The Cobweb: Jill Lepore on whether the internet can be archieved , the Wayback Machine, the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, the complications of attempting to put a time dimension on a two dimensional medium and the almost destruction of the footnote. Featuring a cameo by MeFi's favourite archivist, Jason Scott.