In August 1997, Paul Mathis put a webcam online and gave strangers the ability to mess with his lights.
The site’s FAQ says the project began under the name Spy on Paul Mathis. Visitors could watch a live camera, turn lamps on and off, and observe the result in real time. Over the years it accumulated more cameras, controllable devices, messages, chat, audio, and other features.
The site still describes itself with refreshing accuracy: an amusing hobby with no real purpose, financial or otherwise.
Home automation as public nuisance
The current interface exposes controllable lamps and other devices directly beside the camera feed. Visitors can switch hardware, send a message to a marquee, and in some configurations hear text read by voice synthesis.
The FAQ explains that the controlled lamps use X10 and other home-automation technologies. It also addresses the obvious question: doesn’t it get irritating to have strangers turning the lights on and off?
Apparently you get used to it.
The site’s later name came from a 2002 radio appearance. During a description of the project, a DJ sarcastically asked something like, “What is this, Drive Me Insane dot com?” Mathis did not yet have a working domain for the site, so he registered it.
That origin fits perfectly.
DriveMeInsane belongs to the same early-web tradition as coffee-pot cameras and other projects where connecting an ordinary physical object to the Internet was itself enough reason to build something.
Today remote switches, cameras, smart bulbs, voice control, and web-connected appliances are mundane consumer products. In 1997, making the web visibly affect a lamp in somebody’s room felt like a demonstration of what the network could become.
CacheRat’s 1,967 Ancient Web Domains research list contains many experiments like this because they preserve the moment when ordinary household objects first became Internet-accessible toys.
Most smart-home demos are boring now.
Letting strangers annoy you with yours remains funny.