Internet! A Retrospective

2016 was the 20th anniversary of the first NetDay and the signing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. In celebration of the early web, I curated, art directed, and co-organized a gallery show and talk series with Tim Hwang, in partnership with the Internet Archive, San Francisco Chronicle, Electric Objects, and Google. Internet! A Retrospective took place at SPUR San Francisco in October 2016. We got a nice little writeup by Sarah Hotchkiss in KQED. All proceeds were donated to the Internet Archive.

Logo + Icons

In the spirit of early web bitmap icons, I created a pixel script logo and recreated a few classic early web icons. Broken images, dial-up internet, and under construction pages forever in my heart.

Website

I designed and coded a funny little early web-inspired website to promote the event, located at theinternet.show. It was featured on Brutalist Websites.

Swag

I designed and produced stickers, lapel pins, and hats to give away. We fully regret that red hat.

Featured Artists + works

• Aanand Prasad, Geocities Forever
• Cameron Askin, Cameron's World
• Elisabeth Nicula, Aspects of Geological Time
• Gabriele de Seta, Philip Zhai: Read his poems in Chinese here!
• Morehshin Allahyari, In Mere Spaces All Things Are Side By Side I
• Olia Lialina, On the Internet Everybody Knows You had a Dog
• Ben Sisto, Josephine Livingstone, and Joe Bernardi, Web Safe 2k16

Featured Artifacts

• Collected articles (1994–2005), courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle
• Assorted modems and network hardware, courtesy of Weird Stuff Warehouse
• Early internet company swag, courtesy of Marc Weber of the Computer History Museum

Featured Speakers + talks

• Jenny Odell on how to use the internet
• An Xiao Mina on meme propagation in the developing world
• Rebecca Chernow on recreating a map of the internet using spices
• Jason Scott on archiving the early web