8/24/23
Laurel Schwulst, My Website is a Shifting House …
How can we think about websites to better understand them? What is a website? According to Laurel Schwulst, the most basic definition is that “at its core, a website is still the same as ever before: A website is a file or bundle of files living on a server somewhere. A server is a computer that’s always connected to the internet, so that when someone types your URL in, the server will offer up your website. Usually you have to pay for a server. You also have to pay for a domain name, which is an understandable piece of language that points to an IP. An IP is a string of numbers that is an address to your server.” Websites can do so much. They let the author create objects and the world. It can be an archive, or it can be something interactive, unfinished, imperfect. It can be a personal project or something fun or cultivating, or it can complement what I already do in my life. If I made a website as a room, it’d have a finite intended purpose. If I had a website as a shelf, it’d be an easily changed container for objects. If I had a website as a plant, I’d let it grow on its own slowly. If I had a website as a garden, it would change like the seasons, and I’d hibernate from it sometimes. If I had a website as a puddle, it’d be a quick temporary little thing that disappears slowly over time. If I had a website as a thrown rock that’s now falling deep into the ocean, it’d be something random like my ideas, and I wouldn’t even have to maintain it. I could just let it do its own thing. I like this article because it is vague enough for me to question and reflect on what I think about websites, but it is descriptive enough to help me understand different ways the web can be approached. The web is what I make it.
8/24/23
Ursula K. Le Guin, A Rant on Technology
Ursula K. Le Guin. explains in the article that “technology is the active human interface with the material world.” Technology helps us with “object” things. She isn’t really ranting about humans using technology, more so the fact that we are desensitized and over the years we have confused this word with “hi-tech inventions” or the newer technologies that have exploited natural and human resources. Older technologies are considered “low” or “primitive” or “simple”, but even though humans have developed much more complex things, we should still be appreciative and respect what we have created earlier. For example, making a fire in nature is technology, while the invention of matches is hi-tech. But in general, the neat thing about technologies is that “we all can learn'' how to do things, like building and powering fridges, programming computers, making fish hooks or a pair of shoes. This is a great article, talking about the reality of technology, and how humans are able to do things, learn and invent.
8/31/23
J.R. Carpenter, A Handmade Web
The article talks about the handmade web, and how it actually refers to the physical body manually laboring to create something. It delves into how today it is such a commercialized web of corporations, hand-held devices, that take away from the hand-coded and self-published experiment art of the web. Instead of using software that automatically builds websites, we are going to embrace the history of how the web emerged–the idea that print and digital had more of a symbiotic relationship and were more intertwined. I think this reading was really interesting and helped me to have a different perspective on websites. So many websites nowadays are easily created by softwares, and they all look pretty similar, but it is just so much more special to view something that is different, personal, and unique. Things that are handmade just have so much more value in my opinion. It can be seen as an art instead of just reproduced content.
9/14/23
Taeyoon Choi, Hello World! — (pdf)
I think this article is really cute, visually with the little images of what I believe to be watercolor hand-drawn images and handwriting, contrasting with the text explaining everything. It discusses the idea of computers and Taeyoon’s experience in learning about computers. I like how they talked about how computers actually stemmed from humans and the term human computation, so we have to understand technology and humans. It talks about how binary isn’t all what computers are. To capture everything inside, there is interface and code, which they describe help us see computers as an abstraction with complex repetition.
9/21/23
Callum Copley - A Friend is Writing — (pdf)
I love this website because it is so creative. It has a lot of popups and sound effects, and is really captivating to look at and see everything being typed almost like in the mind of the writer or maker of the website. It’s very colorful and chaotic, even though waiting for each section to load requires patience. It was a little frustrating to read through, but it was interesting to read about the typing and how the ellipses can be either boring or it can create anticipation. It also talks about how social media nowadays has “story” modes which are little snippets that don’t really last and are more live features and how every platform is basically becoming the same thing. I also found it interesting reading about how it’s harder now to separate work from pleasure and our personal lives because people are starting to use social platforms for work outside of work (like Slack and Google and late night emails), and “the professional becomes blurred with the social”.
10/19
Becca Abbe, The Internet's Back-to-the-Land Movement — (pdf)
I enjoyed this reading, while it talked about how the Internet has become something taken from the people but it should be a utopia where communities can coexist and live together, hosting multiple worlds, while websites are micro-utopias that can offer relief from the commodified web. We can either stay within existing structures or go off-grid and build with our digital growth. It explains how the WELL is the "Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link”, and it is one of the earliest computer networked communities outside of government or academic programs. It is focused on information sharing through a text-based message board system linked by some of the first consumer desktop computers. This platform, others, and the World Wide Web pioneered a community-driven, decentralized media landscape in opposition to the unidirectional television, radio, and printed news outlets. Corporate giants soon realized the power of this new tool for communication and the grid became inverted and twisted for profit. The idea was that the internet should go back to being a peer-maintained, communal space, what it was designed to be. I also just like how it explains how the cloud is just a phrase used, but inaccurately described because it is not just floating somewhere. It is stored on someone else’s computer (data center).
10/26
Frank Chimero, The Good Room — (pdf)
I like how this article talks about how design should look good and feel good, but also be good. The way that design technology is utilized can be used to make you stay in a lively and nourishing digital environment or make you leave, if you do not enjoy it. He compares it to two different rooms. Also, the reading discusses the history of technology and talks about how the web began as military technology to share information boundlessly and only later people made it become commercialized. I like how this also talked about regulation of the web and how there are standards on how to use technology.