Piero Scaruffi's Web Site

A bit of history

Between 1983 and 1985, piero scaruffi (who at the time was a software engineer working on the soon-to-be-named-Internet) created his first e-zine, distributed by e-mail over the soon-to-be-named-Internet. Between 1986 and 1990 he created an online database, downloadable via ftp. That database mutated into his own website in 1995, after the World Wide Web was invented. It became one of the very first websites, and possibly the first website ever to carry the name of its owner (for lack of imagination). So www.scaruffi.com has existed in one form or another since the 1980s. That accounts for its high ranking with the most popular search engines (it pre-existed them) and for the huge amount of pages that it contains: those pages have been written over a long period of time.

In 2006 the New York Times ran an article about www.scaruffi.com that was titled "The Greatest Web Site Of All Time" (October 15, 2006, Arts & Leisure section page 26).

In July 2017 the Telegraph listed scaruffi.com as "the oldest webpage that is still being updated". (Also in this publication).

The philosophy of life behind this website

The philosophy is very simple. Today's culture is biased towards business. I discuss culture without paying any attention to what sells. I am interested in great artists, musicians, writers, etc, regardless of how the business and the establishment perceives them. I also try to apply a historical perspective: history is my main interest.

A note about language: what is in English and what is not?

The original goal was to make this website multilingual. Fifty thousand pages later, that goal is becoming a bit unrealistic. Currently the website is in a phase of transition and might remain there forever:

Science is all in English
Pictures of my trips are all in English
History is all in English
Politics is all in English
Art is all in English
Travel is all in English
Rock Music is in Italian before the 1990s, and both in English and Italian from the 1990s on (the history of rock music is entirely in English)
Jazz Music is all in English
Avantgarde Music is in Italian before the 1990s, and both in English and Italian afterwards
Cinema is all in Italian (and very old) except for the lists of best movies and the bios of filmmakers after the 1990s
Literature is mainly in Italian (and also very old) except the general timelines
Poetry is part in English and part in Italian (as originally published)

(Why Italian? A tribute to my roots. I wish I had room to publish also translations in other languages).

A note about the format

To prove the point that my opinions are unbiased, even this very website is built against the advice of just about everybody I know:

I dislike graphics. Pictures slow down your computer. When you want to look at pretty pictures, you go to a museum. You browse the web to find information, as quickly as possible.
I will never force you to watch a videoclip when you browse one of my pages. Videos that play automatically have become the worst feature of the web.
I limit advertising as much as possible, no matter how lucrative it could be. Intrusive advertising (such as pop-up pages) annoys visitors.
This is not a website to praise everything and everybody. On the contrary, it criticizes a lot.
No, there is no business plan for this website. My only business plan seems to be never to make money out of this website. If you are an investor, look elsewhere.

Every single person I know has advised me to do the opposite of these points.