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Jim Boulton

Jim Boulton is a British internet entrepreneur, writer and curator. He is best known for his work documenting and archiving the early Web (1), an era he witnessed first-hand as a pioneer of the UK digital industry (2). He wrote the Amazon best seller, 100 Ideas that Changed the Web, published by Laurence King (3). He curates the exhibition Digital Archaeology (4), which went on world tour as part of the Barbican exhibition Digital Revolution (5). His artwork /Root appeared in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern alongside the work of Ai Weiwei and Marina Abramović (6). His work has been supported by The British Library (7), The Library of Congress (8), CERN (9) and Google (10).

Early Life and Education

Jim was born in Doncaster, UK, and grew up in Peterborough. He studied BA Economics at Nottingham Trent University. In 1997, he undertook a Masters Degree in Hypermedia at the University of Westminster’s Hypermedia Research Centre, dubbed the British answer to MIT's Media Lab by Eva Pascoe of The Independent (12).

Career

Jim’s career in digital goes back to 1997, when he sold a student project to MTV. The following year, he co-founded Large, a web design agency that Seth Godin said “will shake things up and help you see possibilities where none existed” (13). With clients including Agent Provocateur (14), Bang & Olufsen, De Beers, Guinness, and Siemens Mobile, Large was amongst the first wave of digital agencies centred around East London’s Old Street roundabout.

In 2007, Large was acquired by Story Worldwide (15) where Jim ran the London studio alongside Jon King. Specialising in branded content, Story created digital content programmes for brand including Estee Lauder, E*Trade, Johnson & Johnson, Lexus, and Sunglass Hut.

In 2014, Jim joined Aesop Agency as Digital Director, working with brand including Ballantines, HBO, Invisalign, Imogen Heap, and Shell.

In 2015, BundleTech, the start-up Jim founded in 2009, was acquired by Borderfree, a cross-border ecommerce platform, which was in turn purchased by Pitney Bowes (16).

Digital Archaeology exhibition

In 2010, as part of Internet Week Europe, he curated Digital Archaeology (17), an exhibition of web 1.0 websites, covered by the BBC (18), Wired (19) and many other media organisations. Such was the level of interest, Boulton was asked to host it the following year as part of Internet Week New York. Sponsored by Google (20), the exhibition attracted 12,000 visitors and was covered by CNN (21), CBS (22), NPR (23), and many others (24). The exhibition featured as part of Digital Shoreditch in 2013, where it was visited by the team at CERN responsible for archiving the first website (9). The show eventually became part of the Barbican’s Digital Revolution internationally touring exhibition (25).

In 2017, the exhibition was enlarged to incorporate 32 websites and 32 examples of digital art and was renamed 64 Bits (26). Appearing in the London Olympic Park and Publicis advertising agency, the exhibition featured a Q&A with Alan Emtage, inventor of the Internet search engine.

Other activities

Jim was a keynote speaker at Digital Preservation 2012, an event organised by the Library of Congress (27) and in 2014 shared a stage with Tim Berners-Lee at the Web We Want festival.

In 2014, Jim wrote the Amazon Best Seller “100 ideas the Changed the Web” (28) and had his digital artwork /Root displayed in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern (29). In 2019, he hosted a celebration of fifty years of the Internet (30), featuring a keynote presentation by Alan Kay (31) and an interview with Peter Kirstein (32).

Now based at Here East in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (33), Jim writes books, make films, create tools and organises events that celebrate the open Internet (34).

(1) Wired https://www.wired.co.uk/article/digital-archaeologist-saves-old-websites

(2) Error 404 http://digital-archaeology.org/error-404-digital-shoreditch/

(3) Brain Pickings https://bookpickings.brainpickings.org/post/97346967964/100-ideas-that-changed-the-web-jim-boulton-how/amp

(4) Evening Standard https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/internet-history-brought-to-life-with-new-exhibition-in-queen-elizabeth-olympic-park-a3504186.html

(5) Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jun/18/-sp-why-digital-art-matters

(6) The Space https://www.thespace.org/artwork/root

(7) British Library https://blogs.bl.uk/webarchive/2013/05/history-is-arbitrary.html

(8) Library of Congress https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/2011/06/digital-archaeology-on-display/

(9) CERN https://first-website.web.cern.ch/first-website/node/29.html

(10) NPR On The Media (archived from original) https://web.archive.org/web/20110613190638/http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2011/06/10/02

(11) Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_version_history#Microsoft_Internet_Explorer_1.x

(12) NRC website (archived from original) https://web.archive.org/web/19990117034827/http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/

(13) Bullmarket https://images.fastcompany.com/magazine/83/bullmarket.pdf

(14) D&AD https://www.dandad.org/awards/professional/2005/interactive-digital-media/14348/agent-provocateur-consumer-website-agent-provocateur-christmas-email-campaign/

(15) New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/business/media/17adnewsletter3.html

(16) The Street https://www.thestreet.com/markets/mergers-and-acquisitions/borderfree-shares-soar-on-pitney-bowes-395-million-buyout-13141431

(17) Wikipedia internal link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Archaeology_(exhibition)

(18) BBC Digital Planet https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00bqv4v

(19) Wired (Bruce Sterling) https://www.wired.com/2010/11/dead-media-beat-digital-archaeology-exhibition/

(20) Cult of the Mac https://www.cultofmac.com/97896/digital-archaeology-browse-websites-from-the-past-at-internet-week-ny/

(21) CNN https://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/technology/1106/gallery.digital_archeology/index.html

(22) CBS https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/06/06/internet-week-kicks-off-in-new-york-city-with-resurrection-of-ancient-web-sites/

(23) NPR On The Media (archived from original) https://web.archive.org/web/20110613190638/http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2011/06/10/02

(24) Anthropology in Practice http://www.anthropologyinpractice.com/2011/06/internet-week-highlights-digital.html

(25) BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking “It blew my dome off” Corey Arcangel https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b048ng71

(26) Vice https://www.vice.com/en/article/vvkanb/i-surfed-the-wholesome-web-of-the-1990s-at-this-historically-accurate-internet-cafe

(27) Library of Congress https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/2012/06/registration-open-for-digitalpreservation-2012/

(28) Good Reads https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20549552-100-ideas-that-changed-the-web

(29) The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/13/ai-weiwei-david-hockney-data-art-hack-tate-modern

(30) City AM https://www.cityam.com/happy-birthday-internet-lets-make-the-next-50-years-just-as-innovative/

(31) Wikipedia internal link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay

(32) Wikipedia internal link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_T._Kirstein

(33) Here East https://innovators.hereeast.com/innovator/2019/jim-boulton

(34) The Trampery https://thetrampery.com/2019/02/26/meet-members-jim-boulton/