A Vernacular Web was an interesting essay on what the internet used to be and made realize just how much the web has changed in the last 20 years. I thought it was interesting that even this essay is now out of date; many of the links to examples were broken. It shows just how ever-growing and ever-evolving the internet really is. It also made me wonder what the internet is going to look like in another 20 years and what we'll look back on. I did think the author was look at old internet through the fog of nostalgia however. While the author was trying to give us the reasoning why certain things were done, she easily overlooks why we stopped using them as well. Almost all the different parts she talked about were just plain ugly or annoying and I think the internet has changed for the better to leave them behind.
For my project I am still not exactly sure what I want to do but I want explore the proliferation of smartphones and the effects of having an on-hand connection to the rest of the world at all times. I think it's especially interesting the effects its had on places like the Middle East where they have been able to coordinate revolutions using cell phones. Smartphones seem to me like the most futuristic part of our lives and I want to push the boundary of what they can be used for.
Ben,
ReplyDeleteI think the smartphone subject is one that definitely needs to be addressed. This may be something where you can use existing tools to produce a work, whether this is in the form of a performance (or happening, Shane Mecklenburger's Ebay projects could be an example of this), a twitter channel for a specific purpose (Cory Arcangel made this piece with Twitter, for example, as did Brittany Ransom, I'm sure there are others). Perhaps thinking about the kinds of relationships smart phones mediate for us-our relationship to space is changed by google maps, our relationship to communication is changed by our constant updating of what we're doing on social networks, our relationship to our own image is changed by how many pictures of ourselves we upload to the internet. There is a lot of material you can produce with your phone that could be great, so long as it looks back at these power relationships.