Audrey Witters remembers the creativity of the early web.

When she was launching her career in the mid-1990s, being online was more about exploring and having fun than figuring out how to make a return on investment. Witters said if you were curious about someone’s web page,  you could simply click to see their code or email them with questions. She enjoyed how accessible the early web community was and the feeling of connection.

Now a business consultant in San Jose, she spoke at the Internet Archive’s Oct. 22 celebration, praising its efforts to save digital content and encouraging innovation through experimentation.

Watch Witters’ remarks:

“Thank you to the Internet Archive for preserving the history of the early web, that time of collective effort and quirky, chaotic creation, so that we can have really fun moments of nostalgia,” Witters said from the stage, “but even more so that the next generation of creators can be inspired to find their own ways to promote exploration, collaboration and joyful expression.”

Witters shared the story of her career and the influence the internet has had on her work before there was much pressure to monetize content. 

After graduating with a degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University, Witters built her early career in the tech sector. Witters garnered attention for helping design a small, animated alien GIF at a graphic art software company. Her work was featured in a 1996 book, GIF Animation Studio, by Richard Koman.

In those early days, it was exciting to come into work each morning to see if any new web servers had launched, Witters said. She was on the lookout for new and interesting approaches to digital layout, movement, or  interactivity. She followed a graduate student posting pictures of his daily vegetarian lunch – a forerunner of the food bloggers – and witnessed the beginning of e-commerce. Content was diverse and the web reflected a diversity of voices.

Witters leveraged what she learned to develop an expertise in project management, and said she’d like to see more of that early online creativity carried over to confront today’s challenges.

“Business relies on innovation. Innovation is based on creativity, and creativity comes from fun,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of time for fun these days.”

Prioritizing profit without including time for play is not good for individuals, society or businesses in the long run, Witters maintains. As systems evolve, creativity is needed to meet changing demands and unleash new ideas.

For 20 years, Witters worked at Stanford University in the Graduate School of Business, including a decade as the inaugural managing director of online executive programs. Following that role she founded her own company, Learning Impact Advisors, helping higher education clients develop career programs that amplify their mission.

Witters recalls with fondness the “Wild West” days of the early web: “It’s important to preserve that spirit and be inspired by it.”

Jean Armour Polly—better known as the Net-mom, and the person who helped popularize the phrase “surfing the internet” in 1994—adds her voice to the celebration of the Internet Archive’s 1 trillionth webpage preserved.

In her message, Polly reflects on the ephemerality of the web—how sites appear, vanish, change, or are censored—and why the Archive’s ability to reveal these shifts is essential to understanding not just events, but who was speaking, who wasn’t, and whose voices history might otherwise forget. Drawing on her own work digitizing fragile Civil War pension files, she compares the care of digital preservation to rescuing stories from dusty barns and bringing them back to life. Polly honors not only creators, but also the librarians and archivists who ensure that our cultural record endures.

Hi, I'm Jean Armour Polly, also known as the Net-mom. 

It's because in the early days of the internet, I helped a lot of people take their first baby steps on it. But I'm here today to help congratulate and celebrate the Internet Archive's 1000000000000th webpage archived. 

That's just an amazing number. Wow. Because websites are ephemeral. They come up, they go down, links are added, links are deleted. Sometimes they're even censored. The archive reveals all these changes though, and that's important. 

It's important for us to not only see how events were covered, but who was talking about them, what they were saying, and sometimes it's even as important or maybe more important about who wasn't talking and whose voices weren't heard. 

The archive might even become the Rosetta Stone for future digital archeologists trying to decipher the hieroglyphs of emojis or inscrutable memes. 

I have some experience with digitization myself. In recent months, I've been a volunteer at the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society's Digitize New York project. Here where I live. We've been scanning and digitizing a huge cache of Civil War pension documents that had formally been in a lawyer's office, but since 1930, they've been stored in Campbell's soup boxes in a dusty old hay barn. 

When I scan something, I think of the soldier and the story that I'm helping to preserve, because it wasn't just about grievous war wounds or diseases he had picked up, but also about his family history, about camp life, about troop movements and battles, things you just can't find in a history book. 

And I think about his family, I think about him when I scan these documents, but I also think about who had the forethought to save this stuff, and not just toss it or shred it or burn it, but to keep it in hopes that some day somebody would come along and rescue it, digitize it, so the stories would live. 

And that's what the Internet Archive has done and will do. It's so important. Without it, we risk not only losing the websites themselves, but the story of how society and culture has been shaped by them. 

So many kudos to the content creators, but also don't forget the critical work of the librarians and the archivists who have preserved them. 

Save our stories, protect the past, and help shape our future. 

Congratulations.

Katherine Maher, President and CEO of NPR, honors the Internet Archive’s milestone of 1 trillion web pages preserved as “1 trillion artifacts and snapshots of our interconnected world.” In her message, Maher celebrates the Archive’s role in protecting the integrity of the open web—keeping news, public discourse, and our shared stories freely accessible to all. She draws parallels between NPR and the Internet Archive, highlighting their shared commitment to access to information, public service, and strengthening societies through knowledge and dialogue. As Maher notes, in an era when information “emerges suddenly, decays rapidly, and disappears instantly,” the Archive’s preservation work is more critical than ever.

Hello everyone. I'm Katherine Maher, president and CEO of NPR. It's an honor to join you today in celebrating a truly historic accomplishment and one close to my heart.

Congratulations to the Internet Archive and everyone who contributed to this milestone of 1 trillion webpages. That's 1 trillion artifacts and snapshots of our interconnected world. It's a testament to the Internet Archive's unwavering commitment to safeguarding the integrity of the open web and its history, ensuring that this vast digital record remains free and open for everyone. 

At NPR, we share many common values with the Internet Archive, a deep commitment to access to information, a dedication to public service, and a belief in strengthening societies. Through information and dialogue we live today, in an era in which information is unstable, it emerges suddenly decays, rapidly, disappears instantly. It's increasingly difficult for anyone to build stability on this volatility, whether you're an independent learner or society seeking common ground.

So in this moment, the Archive's role in preserving news, public discourse and our shared stories is more critical than ever. The internet is today's living historical record, a cultural mirror reflecting our society, who we are, where we come from, what we perceive matters, how we connect, and how we make sense of ideas, events, and one another. 

By preserving this record, the Archive helps us remain grounded in what we know and what we think we believe and accountable to how we change and evolve over time. It supports vital research and allows us to understand current events within a broader context. This preservation counters the challenge of disappearing news and loss, meaning online. It provides us an enduring resource for journalists, scholars, and the public alike. It protects our shared stories and it strengthens our civic dialogue. 

So let's all celebrate this incredible milestone together. The Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine are trusted, vital resources, and we at NPR are proud to stand with you in this important work. Thank you. Please keep it up. Keep on keeping on.