13th Jan 2024
Since turning 20 last year, I have started experiencing an emotion which I was previously oblivious to. I do believe that the name for this emotion is “nostalgia”, and it must be one of the strongest emotions I have ever felt. This very website, in fact, is partially a result of that feeling, as I have recently been using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to browse archived copies of the internet as-was. I felt much affinity for the hand-crafted nature of these sites, undoubtedly influencing the design of my own. This site exists as, in my view, the natural continuation of what those websites may have been like were they created with modern standards. As it happens though, I am rather unsure as to my reasoning for feeling so nostalgic about such websites, given that I simply was not around to experience their existence.
I used to believe in the absolute rule of websites being (what we would today refer to as) “content-driven”. In old money, this is function-over-form; the idea that the text of a website and the information it carries outweighs any need for any fancy graphics which may live alongside (or, depending on your perspective, impede) it. In practice, this website used to look rather more “shabby”, though that was simply because there was absolutely no formatting. Information was the currency, and it was up to your browser’s default settings to interpret the page. Now, however, I feel I have rather a more well rounded view on the matter.
Of the admirations I had for the numerous pages I visited on the archive, the general feeling I was left with was one of gratitude. One could tell instantly that, although often created by complete amateurs, these websites were nearly always built for nothing more than passion. This was a time when it simply was not possible to earn money from producing web ‘content’ for the most part, and in fact was more likely to cost one money to host. Perhaps that is what I feel nostalgic for? The carefree passion I once felt to my childhood electronics projects and sloppily coded VB scripts. And that passion is perhaps what I aim to continue here.