READING
My Website is a Shifting House
I thought it was interesting to think of personal websites as a sort of "zine" for spreading information, especially tying into the point of "anti-corporation" media. In J.R. Carpenter's "A Handmade Web" where she discusses the aspirations and personalization of the internet before it was governed by corporations, I thought it interesting how the perpetuation of a handmade web in the modern day tied into those early sentiments. Especially in today's age, independent website spreading information, creating campaigns, and reflecting on personal experiences becomes ever more vital for the propagation of self and society.
A Rant on Technology
A concept that stuck with me was technology as a means of coping with the realities of the time. Social media has become our go-to way of dealing with what's going on in the world, processing our day to day stresses through a stimulating combination of blue light and pixels. It's become the most effective escape in the course of human history, more addictive than life and our desire to live it. With the rapid evolution of the modern technologies that distract us, it was an interesting perspective to consider that everything is a form of technology, even something as simple as laundry detergent or fire. It shifted my perspective from hardly considering anything beneath a computer to be advanced to taking the time to appreciate all the technology that surrounds me by asking the question, "do I know how to make it?" Everything is a form of technology, regardless of how "lo" it seems; if you don't know how to make it, it's "hi" tech (that you can learn should you choose to).
J.R. Carpenter, A Handmade Web
Something that really spoke to me when I was reading this article was how "our computers have become individual entities that the users barely control." This made me think back to the days when my dad received his first computer in the 80's, staying up to the wee hours of the morning programming it. Despite the rudimentary nature of early computer technologies, they belonged more to their users than they did today, able to be personalized as much as the user desired. Computers and technology these days, supplied by corporations, are filled with bloatware; system apps that cannot be uninstalled; updates we do not want, that bring features we never asked for. The alternatives, such as Linus, are not widely used in any mainstream software like the Adobe Suite, so the majority of us are forced to use such proprietary software because it's all we can do. The technology works because we don't know how it works, and that makes the act of creating one's own website all that much more an act of resistance. {coding a personal website on a software owned by a megacorp in a megacorp's operating system; a sliver of personality in a wide attempt to suppress the expression of self.}
Taeyoon Choi, Hello World!
An interesting point from this reading was equating humans to the computers we've created via our city infrastructure, and how art mimics life in this regard. I often conflate video games with reality, thinking about how each has inspired the other though pop culture references and coded structures; art mimics life in its creation, and then life mimics it in return through niche references, conventions, and even gamifying our existences. Cycles of code that intertwine themselves into the very fabric of our existence; core memories and, eventually, inspirations. I think it was also a thought-provoking take because our pattern-seeking brains tend to see themselves in everything, so it's interesting to see how that manifests towards different things.
Callum Copley - A Friend is Writing
The first thing I noticed on this website was how busy and full of life it was; messages appearing onscreen, the ping of incoming chats, threads upon threads being formed with new idea. But aside from the experience itself and how it mimiced our digitized social lives, the articles that really stuck with me was "dot dot dot" detailing the expectations of the ellipses. Until I read this passage, I hadn't thought about the ellipses as such a vital thread to digital connections; I had always taken it for granted, just seen it as another part of the digital world without assumign intent. But after reading this article, I've started paying attention to these three small dots and the different ways they manifest around the web, either in their iconic '...' form or otherwise... the rotating circle on a loading screen. The "wheel of death." A progress bar. All symbols that remind us of the time we're spending intentionally with either each other, or online; to visualize our connection, one way or another.
Becca Abe, The Internet's Back-to-the-Land Movement
Tying back into "A Rant on Technology," the demystification of the internet through establishing it oneself and breaking it down really spoke to me, especially with breaking down the illusion of "the cloud." I think it's similar to realizing the energy cost of ChatGPT; even a simple "please" and "thank you" costs millions, not to mention the damage done to the environment though the unsustainable practices it takes to run it. Everything is magic when you don't know how it works, hence why educating oneself on the inner workings of the web is such a powerful tool. By developing more sustainable solutions for the corporatization of the web, we slowly reclaim the community we lost to the takeover of digital overlords.
Another concept that stuck with me was that of utopias being formed in response to dystopian ideals. I hadn't thought about it much before this, but one man's trash is another man's treasure; everyone is going to have different ideas of what a perfect world entails, and how to go about achieving it. The idea of "utopia as response" was an interesting one for me to read about since in pop culture the same ideas of "no more diseases", "no more world hunger", etc. are always peddled as the perfect world to live in (which I don't necessarily disagree with), but that there is more than one way to go about it and in a more realistic setting than a cyberpunk dystopia set in the far future was an eye-opening take. From the reading, it was really the small actions that worked towards creating a better world, such as the calculations from the Club of Rome that humanity would be nearing extinction by the early 70's at the rate we were exhausting our resources. When we consider a "utopia" we tend to think of extremely far-fetched futuristic ideals and not on what we can be doing right now to create it for ourselves, so taking the time to be present in our current needs would be monumental to creating a brighter future rather than simply speculating what it could look like.
BACK TO MAIN