Aha! An Olia discussion
![Grin :grin:](https://forum.melonland.net/Smileys/ALIEN/grin.gif)
Olia was a huge inspiration for me and I think she should be required reading for anyone wanting to get deeper into the web revival!
For those who don't know, she runs the
Terabyte of Kylobyte Age Tumblr account that posts a Geocities screenshot every 15 minutes in chronological order from when it was last updated, it started in 2010 as 1994 (as of writing we are in 2008, so the project must be near its end!)
All that said, this article was written in 2015, and while its a great starting point and a really good example of what Neocities culture felt like at the time, almost 10 years has passed since then, and things do feel a bit different now.
If I understand correctly the basis of the article seems to be advocating that we should be careful how we use technologically accurate terms to describe interfaces and experiences. E.g. Users & Computers instead of People and Technology. With a goal of authenticity and not hiding people from the truth of their interactions.
Olia's article ends on a serious note about the use of UX design in war technology, and frankly, that's out of my ballpark and not something Iv thought about enough to make a good comment, but I suppose it goes both ways; if you can design an experience that softens horror, you can also make one that intensifies it, and one that is ambivalent to it, but I don't know which would be worse. It's the same question that was in the classic
War Games (1983) film, where total atomic war was abstracted down to a game of tic-tac-toe (its a great movie!
![Grin :grin:](https://forum.melonland.net/Smileys/ALIEN/grin.gif)
)
Just looking at the idea of UX and computing terms within familiar everyday civilian life; I do find myself asking some questions!
Firstly, who decided that "User" was an authentic way to describe a persons inputs on a computer, and why should we still agree with that choice when culturally the term User hits very differently then it would have in the early days of computing. Within the web revival, older terms like "User" can sometimes feel taboo becouse they detract from the experience of a web revival space which should feel informal and friendly (would anyone ever call a visitor to their homepage a user??)
Secondly, is "Computer" still an accurate way to describe the collective feeling of being connected to the world via billions of different devices that are all wired into a global infrastructure of electric nodes? When I'm sitting at my computer, what I'm really doing is sitting at
C.S.Lewis's wood between the worlds filled with all other worlds. I use "Technology" not to hide the idea of a computer, but to express the feeling that everything is connected.
Maybe the deeper sense I have is that the experience of an interface is much more organic; its meaning changes and grows over time. For example, it's understandable for someone who grew up before computers to believe that having computers with no interface is natural, but for someone who grew up with GUI computers, interface abstraction becomes authentic. Put more poetically, a website stops being a website and becomes a desktop, and then it morphs again; authenticity is in the eye of the beholder - and technology, either the word or the idea is the subject, not the object.
I was actually in a group call/talk with Olia a few months ago and I asked her what she thought of Neocities culture! The impression I got (without putting words in her mouth) was that she sees it as a community of impressive aesthetic recreations.
While I understand where that's coming from, it sounds more like 2017 Neocities. Back then recreating 90s-style websites using 90s web design techniques was the norm, but I don't see many people doing that anymore. If I look at the newer NC sites now, it stands out to me that they are all about hyper experience, where emotional impact is the priority for people. In some ways web revival culture has started to exceed UX design, we are not fighting it anymore becouse the sites that once ruled UX (Google, Facebook etc) are all starting to look a bit wobbly (I also wonder if that's why they are all so obsessed with VR, becouse VR is their version of hyper-experience design).
I don't think that coding a homepage today is about being technologically authentic - it's about having an experience, just as much as visiting a homepage is an experience
![Innocent :innocent:](https://forum.melonland.net/Smileys/ALIEN/rolleyes.gif)
(I dunno if this actually answered your question?? In short, Rich User Experience? Maybe it existed once, but its gone now and new meanings of experience are passing by)