Mark
Graham
Mark Graham is director of the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive, where he works to help make the Web more useful and reliable. Previously, Mark was senior vice president with NBC News Digital where he managed several business units including Stringwire, a live mobile video platform for collaborative citizen reporting. Mark also served as senior vice president of technology at iVillage; cofounded Rojo Networks, one of the first large-scale feed aggregators and personalized blog readers; and in the early days of the internet led The WELL’s effort to build the first web-based interface for online forums. He also helped bring the pre-web internet to millions of people by running AOL’s Gopher project as part of their Internet Center.
Additionally, Mark managed technology for the pioneering US-Soviet Sovam Teleport email service and cofounded and lead PeaceNet, one of the first online communities for progressive social change, and later IGC.org, one of the world’s first ISPs. He also cofounded the global NGO, APC.org. Mark’s early training and experience with computer-mediated communications was acquired while he served in the U.S. Air Force, spending more than three years working at the Air Force Data Services Center at the Pentagon. While still in uniform, Mark cofounded the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign and later compiled a list of peace groups that was published as the Peace Resource Book.
I am most excited to work on projects that… can help policymakers, and the general public, better understand risks related to the development and use of various weapon systems, especially nuclear weapons.
I am looking for partners that can help me… advance my efforts to improve the Wayback Machine, make the Web more useful and reliable, and generally promote the mission of universal access to all knowledge.
A moment when I felt most inspired in my work was… when I was able to use the Wayback Machine to help Google refute Donald Trump’s false claim that Google had not promoted the 2018 State of the Union address on the front page of its website.
Innovations in my field that I am most excited to work on… include archiving news and social media sources worldwide to help researchers and journalists track, understand, and report about the development and propagation of ideas, including misinformation and disinformation campaigns, across multiple platforms.