W is for Web
when i think of the internet, i imagine it as the cables, wires, and tubes routing our communications, and the black screens filled with green text on the receiving end. the web added a layer of vibrancy that expanded the possibilities of the virtual access and connection ushered in by the internet. since the web’s arrival in the 1990’s, the terms “internet” and the “world wide web” (aka “www”) are commonly used interchangeably, and the term doesn’t carry the awe it once inspired — so much so you no longer need to include “www” when typing in a web address.
the internet is the military-funded inter-network developed in the 1960s for the purpose of computers at research and science institutions to communicate with each other on a single network, but it was the web that opened the door to a digital world. the world wide web is a network of web pages found by their addresses. it was developed at the European physics lab CERN, by tim berners-lee, one of the many white forefathers credited with the birth of the internet. berners-lee developed the initial proposal in 1989, and the resulting software became publicly available in 1993.
the world wide web made it possible for corporations and everyday people to create their own websites and share information globally. it spawned the creation of web browsers like internet explorer and netscape navigator in the 90s, and later safari in the early 2000s, to help you brave the great beyond through your (web) window and URLs (uniform resource locations), web addresses that created a new sense of place (the evolution of websites and browsers deserve their own entries, so more on that in future issues).
the web was and is an invitation for us to join this new digital playground, and from the beginning it was apparent that this new digital terrain was a powerful connecting force — a web, sticky and intersecting with no beginning or end in sight/site. so, what does it mean to web together?
“Webbing inside the window, the stories we need are the stories we have. Our collective memory, an open source software, initialized in our song, our collaboration, our care web technology where tending to roots, weaving mesh, repairing nets, and tying knots are the primary programming protocols.” — “we web as rehearsal (2022),” ayana zaire cotton
we weave the web. ayana’s words invoke this imagery, and create a (hyper) chain link across the embedded webs of artist lukaza branfman-verissimo, and the signifying of the “chorus” through historian saidiya hartman. the aptly named application reminds us that we are ever entangled — forward and backward, across time and space. our memories, our song, our dance, our care, are the sources of connection. we are each other’s echo across the chain. we are the web. the web is how we weave.
as part of the abc questionnaire, there is an exercise to write a manifesto for your vision for an anti-colonial Black feminist critical media ecology (abc) — a liberatory framework and practice for an electronic future rooted in joy and collective care. how do you want to web together? how will your vision be inclusive of our bodies that carry the data?
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