media.org is a is a collective of artists/architects, netizens fueled by a passion for the potential of the Internet. Co-founded by Carl Malamud and webchick, their goal for the organization is to push the Internet to greater heights through public works and activism. They also collaborate as the Internet Multicasting Service (IMS), the nonprofit group that helped pioneer some important early content on the World Wide Web.
Rescued Works, sites we have chosen to refurbish and republish on the Internet for posterity. The second is Living Works, sites we created that now have a life of their own and are maintained by someone else. And the third are what we call the World Wide Cobweb, sites that live on the net in their original state without any active maintenance.
Memento wants to make it as straightforward to access the Web of the past as it is to access the current Web. If you know the URI of a Web resource, the technical framework proposed by Memento allows you to see a version of that resource as it existed at some date in the past, by entering that URI in your browser like you always do and by specifying the desired date in a browser plug-in. Or you can actually browse the Web of the past by selecting a date and clicking away. Whatever you land upon will be versions of Web resources as they were around the selected date. Obviously, this will only work if previous versions are available somewhere on the Web. But if they are, and if they are on servers that support the Memento framework, you will get to them.