It’s history on a grand scale–and a humble scale, too. “The Web is the people’s medium,” says Kahle. “It’s the publisher who won’t turn you down. We have 5 million to 15 million people’s individual voices.”
Opened to the public barely a week ago, the Wayback Machine has already drawn close to a million visitors, overwhelming Kahle’s servers. “We way underestimated the interest,” he says. Kahle, of all people, should have realized what the Cambridge coffee people learned long ago: surfers flock to cool sites.
