023: time to ponder
I often think about how capitalism and our modern, industrialized society has to sell us the vision of a linear time where capital can only imagine the most banal reality of new to old, life to death, a march towards the end. Capitalism requires a strict timeline, because objective time allows for absolute social control.
Use the past as fodder for nostalgia, having people eternally reminiscing the good old days that never were. Use the future as a threat and carrot, entice the weary with the dream house, the nice vacation, the beautiful family that is just beyond the horizon, and when that fails, strike fear with 401(k) talk.
Capitalism will do everything to keep us from the present, because when we are present, we are more powerful. Capitalism will do everything to keep us on this linear path, because they fear the hyperlinking hopping of anarchist internet, the spiral time modalities of indigenous and non-Western groups, the cyclical nature of fungi.
What shall we do with this time we have?
A few years ago, I realized that my phone's home screen had the time for Chicago, Taipei, Yangon, and Singapore. Chicago was self-explanatory, it's where I was located. The other three locations were the time zones for three friends I was frequently chatting with online.
They were sometimes the people I communicated with the most during the course of a day. It's both normal and strange talking to someone that's halfway around the world. On one hand, the call uses the same screen, has the same buttons, the call itself works the same way whether they're 5 or 500 miles away. But it's also all different. The sun is peeking through my window, while they're only illuminated by the phone screen's light. Their voice is still groggy from waking up, I'm yawning from a long day.
Some days it felt like a miracle that I could call someone, and someone from a different continent picked up. Some days it felt easier to call someone from a different continent.
During that time, I made this little poem and website, showing the times that I looked at every time I looked at my phone, a reminder of not just whens—but wheres.
Remember Internet Explorer? How about Netscape Navigator?
We're not here to be nostalgic for a web browser, at least not today. (And definitely not for Explorer and its monopolistic roots.) But we are here to mourn a loss, the lost art of surfing the web. When did we stop being explorers and navigators?
The tiny.sites essay already covers some of this, but I wanted to make a little site that'll hopefully spur some exploring, now and today. You'll need to turn off your pop-up blocker (There will be an essay about the pop-up one day), then when you click the button, it will open up three websites—all quite different from each other, and maybe different than what we encounter every day. The button randomly selects a set of websites to open. There is currently three sets of three sites, for a total of nine curated sites to explore!
Some highlights include an essay on the fascinating early internet Gopher protocol, an exhibition on Flash software art pieces, an excavation of GeoCities art, and more.