Artifacts: Stories from the Emotional History of the Internet

Enjoying the show? Support it here . Season 3 of Artifacts is going back to the things that started it all. This season, I'm looking at the technology, games, objects and pieces of internet culture we remember - from the Zune and MiniDisc to LaserDisc, the Game Boy Camera and Choose Your Own Adventure books. Each episode starts with an artifact, explores its history and then follows the story unde...

Enjoying the show? Support it here . I recently discovered This Week in Fandom History , a podcast exploring the history of fandom, internet culture and the communities that grow around the things people love. It felt like such a natural fit for the Artifacts audience that I wanted to introduce you to the show properly. For this bonus episode, they've put together a special 10-minute cut of one of...

Enjoying the show? Support it here . Season 2 of Artifacts was an experiment. After a first season built around the objects and technology we remember, I wanted to try something different, starting with the experiences technology changed rather than the artifacts themselves. Looking back, I'm glad I did. Not because I think every experiment worked perfectly, but because it helped me understand wha...

Enjoying the show? Support it here . There was a time when saving a game meant writing down a password, carefully copying a code from the screen, or trusting a little piece of plastic not to lose your progress. In this episode of Artifacts , I look at how memory cards changed the way we played and what happened when our game saves became something we could carry with us, from the early days of ded...

Enjoying the show? Support it here . Before the Web became the Internet as we know it, there were other ways of finding your way around. Gopher was one of them - a menu-driven system that made it easier to explore information across the early Internet. For a while, Gopher was a genuine competitor to the World Wide Web. Then the Web became free, Mosaic arrived, and the Internet took a very differen...

Enjoying the show? Support it here . Before app stores, digital storefronts and endless in-game purchases, there was shareware. You could get a game for free, play it, and decide whether it was worth sending money to the person who made it. In this episode of Artifacts , I look back at shareware games, registration cards, and the surprisingly personal relationship between creators and players, and...

Enjoying the show? Support it here . There was a time when recording video felt like an event. Then cameras got smaller, digital storage made recording easier, and suddenly we were capturing the ordinary moments too - family dinners, holidays, kids playing, conversations and afternoons that didn't seem important at the time. In this episode of Artifacts , Danny Brown looks at how home video change...

Enjoying the show? Support it here . Do you remember when software came in boxes? Before downloads, cloud accounts, and subscriptions, buying software meant bringing something home. A box. A disc. A manual. Maybe a registration card. And somewhere inside was that tiny product key you absolutely couldn't afford to lose. You installed the software, put the box on a shelf, and knew that you owned it....

Enjoying the show? Support it here . What did it feel like to discover an entire world inside a CD-ROM? A time before Google, Wikipedia, and instant answers, when there was a different way to explore knowledge. CD-ROM encyclopedias like Microsoft Encarta turned the family computer into a doorway to somewhere much bigger. You could look up the Roman Empire, discover dinosaurs, explore a map, watch...

Enjoying the show? Support it here . What did technology teach us about waiting? Long before instant streaming, cloud storage, and one-click downloads, there was another familiar sight: the progress bar. Whether you were connecting to the internet over dial-up, downloading your favourite song, installing a new game, or burning the perfect mix CD, technology constantly asked us to wait. And somehow...

Enjoying the show? Support it here . What if the best discoveries were the ones you never planned to make? Before recommendation engines, personalized playlists, and "Because you watched..." suggestions, discovery looked very different. You wandered through record shops, browsed library shelves, explored video rental stores, and followed one link after another across the early internet, never quit...

Enjoying the show? Support it here . Season One explored the objects we remember. Season Two explores the experiences they changed. From waiting for a dial-up connection to discovering music, finding your way with a paper map, choosing what was worth keeping, and remembering what it felt like to truly be offline, Artifacts returns with eight new stories about the everyday moments technology quietl...

Enjoying the show? Support it here . Season 1 may have come to an end, but the archive is still open. In this special bonus episode, Danny reflects on the journey that began with a Dreamcast and grew into something much bigger than a podcast about old technology. Looking back at the stories behind internet forums, burned CDs, away messages, midnight launches, the family computer, game manuals, and...

Enjoying the show? Support it here . The early internet wasn't polished. It was messy. Colourful. Sometimes impossible to navigate. And it was filled with websites, profiles, and pages created by people who simply wanted to make something that felt like their own. In the Season 1 finale of Artifacts , Danny Brown explores a time when the internet invited us to create instead of consume. From GeoCi...

Enjoying the show? Support it here . Before games taught us how to play, there were instruction manuals. Folded inside the box, they were more than just guides to the controls. They introduced us to new worlds, told stories, shared artwork, and built excitement long before we ever pressed the Start button. In Episode 7 of Artifacts , Danny Brown explores why video game manuals became such an impor...

Enjoying the show? Support it here . Before we carried the internet in our pockets, it lived in one place. The family computer. Whether it sat in the corner of the living room, the spare bedroom, or the family office, it was a shared space where homework, games, emails, music, and late-night internet adventures all happened on the same machine. In Episode 6 of Artifacts , Danny Brown explores what...

Enjoying the show? Support it here . Standing outside a store at midnight shouldn't be memorable. And yet, for millions of people, it was. Before digital downloads, launch day was an event. Whether it was a new console, a highly anticipated game, a blockbuster movie, or a must-have album, midnight launches transformed ordinary purchases into shared experiences. In Episode 5 of Artifacts , Danny Br...

Enjoying the show? Support it here . Before status updates, before social media profiles, and before we carried the internet in our pockets, there were away messages. A few lines of text attached to a screen name. And somehow, they mattered. In Episode 4 of Artifacts , Danny Brown explores how AIM away messages became one of the earliest forms of online self-expression. From song lyrics and inside...

Enjoying the show? Support it here . Before streaming playlists, there were burned CDs. Carefully curated collections of songs, handwritten track lists, homemade cover art, and hours spent deciding exactly what came next. In Episode 3 of Artifacts , Danny Brown explores why burned CDs became so much more than a way to listen to music. They were expressions of identity, creativity, friendship, and...

Enjoying the show? Support it here . Before social media feeds, algorithms, and endless scrolling, the internet felt different. Smaller. Messier. More personal. In Episode 2 of Artifacts , Danny Brown explores the strange emotional connection people still have to old internet forums - from recognizable usernames and chaotic communities to forum signatures, inside jokes, and the feeling of belongin...

Enjoying the show? Support it here . The Dreamcast failed. At least, that’s the official version of the story. Released on 9/9/99, Sega’s final console lasted only a few short years before disappearing from store shelves forever. But decades later, people still talk about the Dreamcast with a kind of emotional reverence usually reserved for much bigger success stories. So why does it still matter...

Season One of Artifacts explores the emotional history of the internet generation. Not just the technology itself, but the feelings attached to it. The optimism. The weirdness. The creativity. The sense that the internet once felt smaller. More personal. More human. This season: the Dreamcast becomes a lost future old forums become digital neighbourhoods burned CDs become emotional time capsules a...

Remember Winamp skins? Burned CDs? AIM away messages? The Dreamcast? Those weird little corners of the internet that somehow felt more human than everything online today? Maybe we don’t actually miss the technology. Maybe we miss how it made us feel. Artifacts is a podcast about forgotten platforms, dead gadgets, old internet culture, creative communities, and the strange emotional connection we s...