The shifting house reading had so many creative metaphors for how to think about the internet that I had never considered. The section talking about social media made me think about how apps are slowly becoming used more than the internet… they say there’s an app for everything these days. Not sure how to feel about it. The rant about technology reading made me rethink what I consider to be technology. It’s not just devices with screens and their accessories, but everything that was created from something else.
I really liked the quote from Kyle Chayka about feeling nostalgic for a time when the internet felt smaller and more close-knit. This is so true especially to people of my generation who grew up on kids space websites like Club Penguin and Webkinz, and those types of spaces don’t really exist for kids today. I also love this last sentence of the article: “The more proprietary, predatory, and puerile a place the web becomes, the more committed I am to using it in poetic and intransigent ways.” The rise of AI makes this even more powerful of a statement and choosing to hand-build a website an even stronger form of resistance.
The sentiment “It reminded me that the creative, personal, fun web I grew up with is not a thing of the past. It’s still here in 2020. You just have to know where to look” really stood out to me. It’s a reminder of how insanely quickly technology and the world is changing. It made me think about how different the internet is now than it was in 2020, even just five years ago, and how almost unrecognizable it is from when it was first created. I enjoyed learning about the history and perseverance of these types of websites today.
To be honest I had a hard time reading this! All of the popups, sounds, and moving pieces made it pretty overwhelming and stressful, which I’m sure was the intention. I had to read the PDF to be able to focus on the content itself. The discussion of the internet changing the way the conversations exist is super interesting, and one example of that I can think of right away is texting shorthands and how that carries into in-person dialogues.
This reading made me think about sustainability within the internet in a whole new way. The section about the Cloud being marketed very inaccurately to sway public perception is super interesting to me, especially when thinking about where that information is actually being stored. Factors like the security and sustainability of the storage of our personal information are so inaccessible, and it’s scary to think about!
The comparison of the internet to a physical space returns! I love the juxtaposition between a beautiful public library and an underground subway station. Thinking about the intentions and expectations of physical spaces, and then applying that to websites in the same way. Lots of websites today are more like a subway station – transactional and harsh. Lots of websites made in/shown to us in this class are more like libraries – comfy spaces to exist and explore.