b00: Disembodied Ghosts of Internets' Past

They have all survived a major trauma and have the scars to prove it. Perhaps a touch dramatic but hear me out. Kate Wagner writes an excellent article for the “Pilgrim’s Regress” edition of The Baffler in which she talks about the visual and spiritual departure from Internet 1.0 to 2.0. What I am asserting isn’t really a criticism or a hailing of Wagner, it’s something closer to a misrepresentation due to a purposeful misinterpretation.

Wagner refers to the standard UI we all experience as “the Hell of beautiful interfaces”. She says that there has been”… a battle for the soul of the internet in which the bad guys of course won.” This is irrefutable but the old internet did not go down without a fight, and I’m interested in the chunks of flesh it ripped out of its shiny new counterpart before it fell. So much of the internet connects to other parts of the internet that inevitably there will be sourcing errors as time goes on. Just because Myspace goes, does not mean every button that has ever linked to Myspace goes with it. As well (and most importantly), there are so many people that are nostalgic for the old internet that their design aspects/features will inevitably make their way back online. Wagner calls these tidbits “disembodied ghosts”. Every time an “innovator” implements a design that appeals to nostalgia for the internet that they helped wipe from existence, a fairy gets its wings – ya know?

Excuse this potentially gory and odd metaphor but it is inevitable that so much of the internet will get its achilles’ slashed before it even gets to the first hurdle. What comes after it has to be mindful of the bodies that litter the track (gross...sorry). The new internet will always be bogged down by its predecessor or its “disembodied ghosts”. If we must have a hellish new interface at least it will be haunted by the scars it accumulated to exist.

Excuse me for being potentially being gory and odd, but I find this endearing. There is a certain charm in the 404 and sourcing errors. I am with Wagner that it is a complete tragedy that so much content has been chopped from the internet but you’re just going to have to forgive me for dancing in the craters left on the skin of the otherwise unblemished internet 2.0. No amount of homogenization can keep the contemporary internet void of its ghosts. And chill, I am not saying that obvious traumatropism is satisfying enough to replace the freedom of the old internet. But the ethos of this publishing collective reminds me that just because something is gone, does not mean it is forgotten.