Journal Entry 9/16

Parimal Satyal

• I’ve actually never been to GifCities before, didn't know that was part of Internet Archive.


• A lot of these earlier web terms I have never heard of. (Gopher, FTP, Usenet, Mosaic, Tripod, Fortunecity and Freeservers, etc)


• “No, the web was much more of an adventure. It was a place that you wandered to discover new areas, like exploring the vast open seas. A new virtual space that lead to all kinds of strange, interesting, exciting places.” Another analogy to add to the list of what the web is like. The more of these we come across the more similar they seem to be. Makes me think about our upcoming Structure project too and what they can/might be.


• I never thought about the browsers all being like nautical and navigatory themes which is so interesting. And “surfing” happens in the ocean too. So many ocean analogies which is one I don't think we've mentioned yet. Add it to the list.


• Neighborhood. Add it to the list. (this list is getting really long now.)


• There is so much "content" that is constantly pushed at you as a user that very few of us actually venture out to browse and explore anymore. We simply don't need to… Instead of browsing, the web is for many an endless and often overwhelming stream of content and commentary picked out by algorithms based on what they think you already like and will engage with. It's the opposite of exploration.” Very similar to a lot of the stuff we've talked about so far in this class with other reading discussions. All readings have been from different years and yet the conversation can always come to this somehow.


• “Don't make users think.” Well I think we've nailed that one quite a bit with the modern web.


• The ASCII Art Gallery was super cool. Spent some time browsing through and looking at some of the images.

Thoughts and comments during discussion:

Everything has an algorithm now so there's no need to browse because it's just given to you.

On Instagram not allowing people to click links: You can't put links in comments or captions and you can't copy text from them either which just furthers them restricting you to their site only.

Words I thought to add to the commercial web vs small web list: The reading said "the web was much more of an adventure", so adventure maybe.

Maybe that the goal is different? the goal of commercial is to retain you whereas small web doesn't necessarily try to keep you on it but freely move through it.

The immediacy of the internet causes people to not even have time to think or form their own feeling about things because as soon as something happens you have 10 videos and articles telling you how you should feel about it.

Another thought, the commercial web works together as well. Like Instagram knowing things you googled and showing you stuff about it.