Orphaned Websites

'It's likely the abandoned project of someone whose enthusiasms led them to new activities, leaving an orphaned website to live in perpetuity like a once carefully tended garden that slowly succumbs to weeds without completely losing its original form.'
[http://andrewindeutschland.blogspot.com/2007/06/on-internet-nobody-knows-youre-closed.html]

An orphaned web-site is one that has no links to it on the web. It can also have no search terms linked to it, making it impossible to find without typing in the exact URL. Within a network like the World Wide Web, not being linked in this way makes it a virtual waste that consumes a URL and space. Are these sites the fossils of the web? Or perhaps the contents of virtual skips, on the brink of being deleted unless someone stumbles across and retrieves it. Linking it back into a web of use and desire.

How do you find orphaned web-sites? Is there a programme or search engine that can? If so, could it be liked to a skip lorry or skip raider?

alexa.com allows you to enter a URL and in most cases tells you the number and addresses of sites that link to that address.

'It was on the UCLA campus in 1969 that the first Internet connection was established... The ARPANET evolved into the Internet in the 1980s and was discovered by the commercial world toward the end of that decade. Originally conceived and built by — and for — the scientific research community, it is dominated today by the commercial sector.'
[http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/stories/netis30.htm]

What site is the oldest existing website? (which has the oldest 'last updated' date) Do any exist in there original form from the 1980's? or is old on the Internet 2002? How short has the gap between now and the past become. When you take a piece of Apple hardware thats two years old to their store. They say they won't touch it because 'it's vintage'.