The ebbs and flows of the wild, wild Web
Surfing on the web revival to discover the web of life
As we all know, the net used to be different. Wait, do all of us even remember?
I spent my youth surfing the Web. Unlocking new knowledge through the classic search bar, where you had to pore over hand-made websites to find answers to the most basic questions.
Yeah, really different now, isn’t it? Rather than clicking through, we scroll indefinitely for answers. Or just wait for the machine to give us a perfect, ready-made, resounding “Yes”! or “No”!. Or a false answer, perhaps. Sometimes right, but not quite.
Not great when we realize that knowledge isn’t static, but ever-evolving. Most deep questions we ask, about nature especially, are rhetorical. And machines don’t seem to fully realize that.
I can’t say that I don’t use Large Language Models (LLMs, part of the tools collectively called artificial intelligence) at all. We’re kinda forced to, anyway. But there are alternatives.
I didn’t start seriously learning about HTML, CSS and Javascript until I really wanted a home on the web. So a few years ago, I dove into it. I built a few test websites. Then, a bit more than a year ago, I discovered neocities.org, a personal website community and web host.
This instantly seemed to me like a great alternative to doomscrolling. I could finally talk about all my nature interests without it feeling like I’m screaming into the Meta/Instagram void.
There, I found the nature tag, full of nature enthusiasts emulating either the personal web only found in the 90s Geocities websites, the birder websites full of precious information created by dedicated ornithologists, or something creative and entirely new.
Call it whatever, I call it bloomsurfing, the opposite of doomscrolling. I got inspired by ribo.zone, where you have this lab desk and you can explore the scientist’s many interests. Visit that link to indulge.
So that’s when I thought up birdtree.land.
I started making haikus and it quickly snowballed into a showcase of all my creative projects.
There is my latest one. Try to find it by playing around, it’s a tough one to get.
This is not to name all my projects, I’ll let you check them out if you want.
As a broader reflection, I feel like this is a form of journaling, but in public. I love the idea of learning in public as a catalyst to learning, a way to accelerate how we traditionally absorb information.
In just this way, the creative act of public journaling, through a digital garden, a neocities website, or just minizines you leave on a table (I have some on my other website, hemiboreal.com) is priceless. It frees us from the constraint of only consuming what others did, feels less like screaming into the void (guestbooks are the best, this is what I use) and allows us to grow with our web presence. I think it’s a positive and revolutionary thing!
As I created birdtree.land, I have been inspired by many websites, including one called digitalhumus. There, there are nature saunters, interactive clickable experiences using HTML image maps.
Here is one of mine. More to come.
I also made my interest in nature even more profound along the way!
This is what I mean by “surfing on the Web revival”. Learning from each other, innovating ever-so-slightly, and most importantly, having fun.
Happy surfing!