From dial-up to wi-fi, an engaging cultural history of the commercial
web industry
In the 1990s, the World Wide Web helped transform the Internet from the
domain of computer scientists to a playground for mass audiences. As
URLs leapt off computer screens and onto cereal boxes, billboards, and
film trailers, the web changed the way many Americans experienced media,
socialized, and interacted with brands. Businesses rushed online to set
up corporate "home pages" and as a result, a new cultural industry was
born: web design. For today's internet users who are more familiar
sharing social media posts than collecting hotlists of cool sites, the
early web may seem primitive, clunky, and graphically inferior. After
the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, this pre-crash era was dubbed "Web
1.0," a retronym meant to distinguish the early web from the social,
user-centered, and participatory values that were embodied in the
internet industry's resurgence as "Web 2.0" in the 21st century.
Tracking shifts in the rules of "good web design," Ankerson reimagines
speculation and design as a series of contests and collaborations to
conceive the boundaries of a new digitally networked future. What was it
like to go online and "surf the Web" in the 1990s? How and why did the
look and feel of the web change over time? How do new design paradigms
like user-experience design (UX) gain traction? Bringing together media
studies, internet studies, and design theory, Dot-com Design traces the
shifts in, and struggles over, the web's production, aesthetics, and
design to provide a comprehensive look at the evolution of the web
industry and into the vast internet we browse today.
