my website is a shifting house ... & a rant on technology
I think there’s so much power in being able to create websites from scratch. Websites and especially their making can feel very elusive or out of reach for most people. I think there’s a lot of beauty in the ability to make something for the web that feels unique or doesn’t even resemble, “actual websites” as they’re called in My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be?
The concept of “actual” websites is something I want to get away from a bit in this class. Now I’m not saying none of what I design will resemble these “actual” websites, but I believe there’s so much flexibility/possibility in web design.
#1 → aug 25, 2024
I’d like to explore what else it can be. What comes to mind when thinking about a website as a container is an essay/interview by Elan Ullendorf. The two-part substack post is about websites as love letters and in it he interviews internet artist Chia Amisola.
That said, I’d still like to use my knowledge to expand the limited HTML and CSS I’m using on my personal website and to be able to make it look just as I imagine it (or at least as close as I can get).
a handmade web
Whereas archives held in museums or libraries generally contain artifacts created elsewhere — manuscripts illuminated in a monastery, for example, or photographs developed in a darkroom — the handmade web pages contained in this online archive continue to exist in the medium within which they were created. That said, the frames through which we view them continue to change.
#2 → sep 1, 2024
- web as something that “ought” to be changes/updated with the times, otherwise it's obsolete or dated
- same logic is not applied to other forms of art/historical documentation... text compared it to to illuminated manuscripts, which feel clearly indicative of a time and are never expected to appeal to our current tastes
hello world!
“How did we get here? Well… as the computer was commoditized, users became the primary source of value. Commercial incentives drove corporations to establish proprietary ecosystems to capture market share, setting off fierce competition for “frictionless” experiences that deliberately concealed the logic inside. And with computers designed to be ever-more complex, while interfaces made ever-simpler, the gap between user and machine only grew wider.”
proprietary ecosystems/vendor lock-in: we depend on products that are not widely understood and whose technology is not accessible without obtaining them from a third party who stands to gain (usually) money.
I feel that these dependencies become even harder to escape the more the tech becomes intertwined with capital and work. this idea also reminded me of a couple of quotes from Elan Ullendorff’s The Case for an Anti-productive AI:
“But god-adjacent control over tools has always led to a different, more nefarious loss of control. Our history is riddled with examples of tools that were supposed to save us time—cars, dishwashers, workplace communication tools—that instead propelled us towards more responsibility and less leisure time.”
#3 → sep 16, 2024
a world in which we are forced to segment every fiber of our being into monetizable chunks, our tools become nothing more than weapons in the arms race for productivity and attention.
The idea of a computer has changed drastically from what its original function/purpose was. This reflection makes me wonder how else we might contextualize or use computers (ie. as a city) if they weren’t now so commonly associated with productivity/work or buying things.
- Inaccessibility… (computer or app as city)
- There are barriers between what we have the power to change and influence. app reviews vs city council or protest
- There’s an exterior kind of customization and personalization w/ computers or apps, but the real software/hardware changes are out of our control similar to how infrastructural/policy/etc. changes may be out of reach for citizens in a city though we have control over a small percent of the whole (our property).
Callum Copley - A Friend is Writing
...multitasking has been found to increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol” as well as “the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline, which can overstimulate your brain and cause mental fog or scrambled thinking. Multitasking creates a dopamine-addiction feedback loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus and for constantly searching for external stimulation.
- thinking about the impermanence of each tab… when i spend time on one are the others going away? is this constant stream a distraction or actually time sensitive
- - tons of pfps/individuals but many individuals deliver only one source/voice/sentence/or WORD
- it stresses me out that i can’t close tabs or clear notifications
#4 → sep 23, 2024
- so-called instant messaging
- “This semi-immediate form of talking, in which every line can be revised until it is sent, is the definitive characteristic of so-called instant messaging. Whereas a truly instant messenger would display each and every keystroke in real time, instead we have an exchange that sits halfway between speaking and writing.”
- “There is a clear trend within social media of replicating popular features across platforms as those platforms attempt to attain a monopoly over social media rather than to occupy a specific place in its wider ecology.”
- Is singularity still a thing for social media platforms?
- - Work/Life balance not a thing anymore? Computer in home makes home indivisible from work ??