Geocities and the RICH USER EXPERIENCE (RUE)

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Attention
The article linked here has some disturbing images: Screenshots from interfaces used in war. The reasons will be described and touched in this post (without images) as well. I found this article a while ago, and read it back then. I wasn't sure if or if not to post it here, but lets try it.
http://contemporary-home-computing.org/RUE/

tl;dr and some backgrounds:

The text is made by Olia Lialina who is, according to the Wikipedia, an early example for digital net art that generated revenue, but also active in the academic discussion of art; and one can also find really old examples for her being perceived within the academic context. The text is a short-version from a lecture she has given at the university of Berlin. She seems to be important for the GeoCities Research Institute - a institution dedicated to research Geocities (which you might regard as the the role model for NeoCities). Given that she seemingly had some influence within the academic digital art scene, you might wonder if, and when so, how much influence her work had on the web-revival movement.

The argumentation, is - from what I understand - inspired by media philosopher Dietrich Kittler. A central assumption they share, is that complexity makes things harder to control; instead, it becomes a way to control the person who uses it by influencing their perceived reality, and through it, their doings (basically controlling them).

She claims that user experience design is an influential idea within the professional design of Websites (that became applications, and by doing so, whole "realities": A user can't technically close the window, but must say "OK" or even "Oh fine!" to get it away), and that the elements that we perceived as normal for "modern" websites by then (2014) where introduced to allow to make websites a "fun" experience, removing the user from the control.

She brings various examples from products and designs where the user interfaces is designed to manipulate users, control their behavior, and so on. Think of things like dark patterns (that are the opposites side variant of applying this theory: How can people be controlled through websites?) or platform capitalism. It is also worth to think about Marshall McLuhan, who said that the medium is in itself the most important message. This is important when platforms change their core mechanics - even though the discussions that are done with the platforms seem to remain identical, an essential change is made in these cases: Altering the platform alters what does happen there. This is also a thing that is described and illustrated in the linked article.

Neocities is for her a resistance against these things.
Do you agree? I find it noteworthy that some of the nostalgia here isn't directed to the Geocities web; instead, many use it as a medium to discuss more modern media (keeping in mind that the medium is the message, what does this say?).
It is interesting to compare this with Mark Fishers concept Hauntology, that might be a way to explain the "nostalgia" that is within the content of these pages (the medium they are about.

I do believe that the web revival is more eclectic: Here at the board, we also have people who try to replicate "user experiences" and describe nostalgia for pages and platforms that surfaced after the "arrival" of the Web 2.0 or the rich user experience. What do you think about such pages? Do you attempt to create a "user experience" with your work yourself? How do you think about rich user experience in relation to the web revival?

[Melooon]

Aha! An Olia discussion 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!  )

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  (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)

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Hi Melooon ;).
So, I wasn't off about here being somewhat important to the web-revival  .
I'm mainly a game developer and interested in gaming when it comes to digital art - I have sympathies for the web-revival, but some things are clearly different for me - and the web-revival is so eclectic, multi-layered, and colorful that it is sometimes difficult to understand why things are as they are (or even define/grasp what it is about) - hence the questions, that weren't platonic; as said, I share your feeling that "user experience" is indeed something that is seeked, at least in parts of the web-revival. On the other hand, I've seen some pages here that seem to refuse the idea of "shipping a experience" (maybe of older web-revival associates? Is this indeed a generational thing?).

About other things you addressed in your post:
The concept of a "user" is relevant for me; I've to think about those peoples setup, their probable behavior, and problems they might stumble over. They are a different things than visitors: They allow me to execute code on their hardware, and it is my responsibility that they don't regret it - my software is basically a visitor on their system, and I hope that they "use" my software in that way.
I see our website mostly as a possible gateway for them to find us and become users. So I'd say that user is at least a possible way to see computer users, even in 2024. But I share your feeling that things are different for most of the web-revival-people nowadays :).

About "computers": Once, when I walked through a street, I had the vision that in every house, there were several windows: the various computers and devices that are, at the same time, digital entries to the internet as an giant ideal room that stretches over the world. I think this is what you address with the wood between the worlds reference? But they are still technical devices - and being aware of that is important, especially since they are nowadays such a important factor for our reality: Who builds, programs, controls them? How much control do we have ourself, and how much do we give away? For me, using (and creating) open source software is a result of this view.

I do believe that complexity always creates some distance between us and the "essence" that is at the bottom of all things. Using or creating this distance is okay, but I think it is important to make it - in every sense of the word - transparent.

I hope that I'm somewhat understandable :D.