Thursday, December 17, 2009

Internet Archaeologist


I love this video from The Onion. It's supposed to parody online social networks (Friendster, in this case), but it's very revealing of the public's perception of archaeologists. Look at this guy's wardrobe!

Moreover, the archaeologist (Dr. Maxwell Frye) embodies all of Holtorf's archetypal figures. He is at once an adventurer (boldly digging through a web browser's history), a detective (explaining the cryptic purposes of the website he found), a sage (proposing contrived explanations for the fall of the Friendster civilization) and a conservationist ("You may go to the site, but leave everything as it is!").