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Rediscovering the Small Web (2020)
Most websites today are built like commercial products by professionals and marketers, optimised to draw the largest audience, generate engagement and 'convert'. But there is also a smaller, less-visible web designed by regular people to simply to share their interests and hobbies with the world. A web that is unpolished, often quirky but often also fun, creative and interesting.
The colours, graphics, creative navigation, interesting ideas... the simple fact of clicking through the pages of someone's personal website in 2020 made me nostalgic of the web of the late 90s and early 2000s that I grew up with. Most websites today are built with sophisticated content management systems, SEO and social media strategies, multiple plugins, detailed analytics and audience tracking, optimized for different breakpoints and served via a global CDN. NetHistory has extensive archives of early network publications (VM/COM, NetMonth, FSFNet, DargonZine, Nutworks, The Gilding Byte among others) and “personal insights of the people who were there while BITNET and Internet history was being made”.
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