MachineMachine /stream

One of my favorite websites is the semi-obscure digital library known as AAAARG (don’t even try googling. You just get pirate-themed sites). The site is a sundry collection of critical documents – many of them highly treasured theoretical classics, others obscure anarchic tomes and legal texts – presented in a simple, sleek alphabetized index of .pdfs.

The idea from the beginning was that AAAARG’s collection would grow organically, since anyone can upload a text to the site. But what takes this beyond basic p2p sharing is the way the index relates to the site’s other peer features: first, a discussion page mostly featuring book requests and text uploads, and second, a page of user-made issues that cluster books around a general theme. So not only the text index, but also the classifications that organize them grow collaboratively.

Even more interesting about all this is the high quality of useful content. Which also makes it fragile (just read on).