Quote I found worthwhile:
In "Media Archaeology: Method and Machine versus History and Narrative of Media" (2011) Wolfgang Ernst observes: "If a radio from a museum collection is reactivated to play broadcast channels of the present, it changes its status: it is not a historical object anymore but actively generates sensual and informational presence."
We can yearn for the early web all we want, and we can easily create projects that mimic the aesthetics and the functionality of sites from back then. However, we’ll never get to have the exact feel of the sites because the world we live in today is so vastly different from back then, and we have sites all around us that remind us of how the web is today. People on the web back in the day lacked that comparison, and I imagine that their experiences with the web were much more freeing and exciting than what we have today.
This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t learn lessons from old sites and carry values and mindsets from the handmade web into our own sites, but I think it’s worthwhile being thoughtful about why. IS it just for nostalgia, yearning for another, simpler time period? Or is there real merit?
New words i learned:
Brogue: a strong outdoor shoe with ornamental perforated patterns in the leather.
Idiosyncratic: having strange or unusual habits, ways of behaving
7/1/2024
Taeyoon Choi, Hello World!
It’s interesting to read some of these sorts of writings right after setting up Assistive Access on my grandmothers iPhone, a feature designed to make the device simpler and more intuitive for the elderly to understand. With all of this discussion and beratement of companies making the technologies that power our computers less accessible, I feel a lot of the arguments glaze over groups of people who are less tech savvy or have no desire to know how they function. I agree there should be an option to peek inside, but it saves a lot of time for the vast majority of the population to not have to bother or be distracted by it.
In any case, one day I'd like to make a computer too.
7/8/2024
Frank Chimero, The Good Room
I never got to go inside the NYPL either of the times I got to visit, and I really feel like I'm missing out. This place looks so beautiful and full of knowledge.
this part is very beautiful and well appreciated:
"I once heard that a library is one of the few remaining places that cares more about you than your wallet. It means that a person can be a person there: not a customer, not a user, not an economic agent, not a pair of eyes to monetize, but a citizen and community-member, a reader and a thinker, a mind and—God, I am going to say it—a soul."
If there was more influence from the government over the growth and regulation of the internet would it be more kind to users? Or more like a library?
reading a book is active
the internet and social media at large is passive
how can social media be more like a book?
how can the internet be more like a library? -> wikipedia
"Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said their biggest competition was sleep. That’s a pretty grim statement, joke or not. Biology is always such a nuisance for business."
also to note: the best received apps and experiences are the ones that enhance and support life, not the ones that try to distract from it or substitute it.
7/24/2024
Jeffrey Alan Scudder, Drawing is the Best Videogame
Like a lot of the readings we’ve done so far in class, it’s very obvious that my experience growing up with technology is vastly different from the authors. The constraints their devices experienced are much much more harsh than what I have, and a lot of their ethos and practice seem to have evolved from those restrictions. For example, I wonder what they think of vector based art, or 3d video games that don’t rely on sprites but polygons and vectors.
I think that their argument : drawing is the best video game - could also be better summed up to: imagination is the best video game. Drawing is just a more direct outlet for that form of expression than playing a game someone else created. Links awakening is much more of an experience for the user than a modus of expression. Playing a sandbox game would be a lot of fun for this person I bet.
Also as far as paper video games go, this article made me remember pencil flick games from the origami yoda books. I might be the only one who remembers that.