S02E03: "Coding Layouts" In The Early 2000s

Emma teaches Darius about what it was like to make websites as a preteen in the year 2000. Darius is happily surprised to learn that social capital has always been tied to one's ability to purchase a domain name. Emma holds forth on Neopets, blinkies, and adoptables. We come to the conclusion that technology is just the story of humans reinventing the guestbook over and and over. We also talk about participatory culture, which as far as Darius is concerned is basically just academics studying the guestbook over and over (he means this as a compliment). Links: Lissa Explains It All, Greymatter is still around and you can still make websites with it, a Wikipedia article on The Great Tables vs Divs War, a LiveJournal group of women who post memories of this era of web development, and here is a citation for the paper by McRobbie and Garber, "Girls and Subcultures", full text of which is available via your university, library, or intrepid web searching.