10000 URLs

During a lovely email exchange, Fabian mentioned the existence of something incredible: a printed book containing the 10000 best internet URLs in German. I can't stop thinking about that book. The idea that someone created a physical artefact whose content is tied to something so ephemeral as a URL it's honestly amazing. And it got me thinking about my internet usage and browsing habits.

10000 is way too many URLs for me to think about but what if I were to scale it down to 1000 or even 100? If I had to select 100 URLs to represent "the best" of what the web has to offer right now, which URLs would I choose? It's such a hard question.

A few of the entries are pretty straightforward because I'm sure they'll be around for a long time and they're obviously important: Wikipedia and the Internet Archive. I have to admit that picking the Internet Archive feels almost like cheating.

But after that? I honestly wouldn't know where to start. I'd probably not pick any of the social media platforms and I'd mostly go for independently owned websites: blogs, magazines, and personal sites. Those are IMO the most likely websites to survive in the long run.

This is such a fun thought exercise that I think at some point I'll sit down and compile a list of the 100 best websites. Thank you for sending me down this fun rabbit hole Fabian.