mind traps

As early as 2012 I noticed in my students a tendency I called "end-user brain." They didn't get curious about technology (or, by extension, anything else); they sat and waited to be told how to use/do the thing. Left to their own devices with a device or a piece of software, they absolutely would not start poking it to see what made it work; they would wait for me to show them.

Contrast this with my generation (late Gen X) - if we had computers in the house at all, it was because a parent brought one home, plopped it down, and let us go at it because they didn't know any more about it than we did and also it kept us quiet and out of their hair. So my instinct when faced with new hardware/software is to start poking it to see what happens. It *baffled* 2012 me that my students weren't doing that.

I've only seen end-user brain get worse, honestly. The brightest ones might ask questions about where to start, but the rest just expect to be told how to do just enough to complete an assignment so they can get back to scrolling their own phones. Even their facility with Tiktok or Snapchat never seems to transfer. I know humans are surprisingly adaptable and they'll probably figure it out once they're out of a classroom, but I find it unsettling all the same.

I think it boils down to intention vs distraction. The latter is unfortunately the status quo. 'Smol Web' was never status quo. We were a bunch of geeks who enjoyed coding our pure html web pages by hand. Creativity is still there, hidden behind the noise, awaiting to be noticed.

Carefully curated bookmarks. A small amount, but beautiful.

hello, i grew up around the time of transition between what we'd refer to as the 'old web' and the current state of the net to-day. i remember very clearly how it used to be, much less corporate, a lot more free and experimental, as people were trying to get to grips with the technology. and witnessing the internet shift, and morph into something more solid and yet soul-less, it was interesting, to say the least. not all soul has been lost from the internet, there are still spaces where people are expressive and creative and straight up enjoying their time on their computers. im kind of rambling right now so idk if this makes much sense. but i wish more people would explore the further corners of the web, and not settle for that which is spoonfed to them by the big companies. i hope that some sort of web-revolution comes soon, though it is rather unlikely to happen anytime soon.

i remember using social media a lot as a teenager, when it wasn't as poisonous as it is now. there was still cyberbullying, and weird standards to 'meet', but it wasn't as all-consuming as it is now. things like tiktok have seriously rotted people's brains, i think, and im very very glad to have grown up in a period before this deep obsession. im not sure what else to say, my head is blank. hehehe