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The idea of including a haiku error message as part of the traditional "404 — File Not Found" window (which indicates that the requested URL cannot be displayed) is not original with us. Several other web sites have been using one to a few haiku messages as part of their "404" pages. Ours is, however, one of the few to include over a dozen poems, of which one is randomly selected each time the page is called, and all chosen specifically to tell you how sorry we are not to be able to provide the page you requested. Who wrote all these poems? That in itself is an interesting story . . . On January 26, 1998, Salon magazine, through its 21st Challenge web site, issued Challenge No. 4. In that Challenge, the editors stated that "the world of high-tech has been called soulless — a charge that is borne out by on-screen error messages like 'abort/retry/fail?' and '404 — file not found.' " They invited their readers to submit up to three error messages written as haiku poems. The response was overwhelming, with more than 200 individuals submitting entries in just seven days, and many of them including the maximum three haiku permitted. The results were announced February 10, 1998, and can be viewed here. Since that time, other writers have contributed their own compositions to the collection, often anonymously, resulting in several different sets circulating as e-mail letters. For our purposes, we sifted through those we could find that seemed relevant, editing some of them to fit our needs more closely. We currently have thirteen different haiku in our collection, although it may take you quite a while to find them all. If you really just have to see them all at once, try this page. |
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