The virtual (and nostalgic) Museum of Endangered Sounds

"Imagine a world where we never again hear the symphonic startup of a Windows 95 machine. Imagine generations of children unacquainted with the chattering of angels lodged deep within the recesses of an old cathode ray tube TV," Chilcutt writes. "And when the entire world has adopted devices with sleek, silent touch interfaces, where will we turn for the sound of fingers striking QWERTY keypads? Tell me that. And tell me: Who will play my GameBoy when I'm gone?"

In reality, Chilcutt doesn't even exist. He's a made-up character from the site's real creators, Marybeth Ledesma, Phil Hada, and Greg Elwood, who met as advertising students at Virginia Commonwealth University, as noted by the Washington Post. They asked a friend to pose as Chilcutt and launched the site as a nostalgic gag.

"We were all in a car going out to eat, and Marybeth was on her BlackBerry texting, and our other friend was texting on his iPhone," explained Hadad. "You couldn’t hear him, because iPhones are silent, but we heard the clicking on her BlackBerry. And we started thinking, 'Are gadgets getting quieter?'"

Although there are sounds from the early 20th century on the site, it mostly serves as a soundtrack of the '80s and '90s era. Unlike a normal museum that preserves physical objects, the Museum of Endangered Sounds preserves experiences: playing with a Tamagotchi, making a mix-tape, answering a Nokia phone. It makes us remember what it was like to be a part of the beginning of the Internet.