In this thought-provoking piece, Schwaltz describes the “technological friction and social pressures” that come from creating and maintaining a website in our modern age. As earlier readings alluded to, in recent decades, the number of websites registered have increased exponentially while the influence of a few major players play an outsized influence in its landscape.
Citing the ambiguities of today’s highly commercialized web, complete with proprietary applications, MNCs, digital publishers, cookies, and search algorithms, Schwaltz reminds us it is increasingly radical to self-publish on a highly polished and highly saturated web. Encouraging readers to embrace the duality of websites as both “subject and object at once”, Schwaltz advocates for individuals to guide the web’s future, making clarity a possible intention in designing websites.
Ultimately, we’re brought back to the basics -- the internet is made of individual nodes: individual computers talking to other individual computers. Schwaltz reminds us that websites are inherently unfinished, and as designers, taking advantage of setting the language, style, rules, and architecture is in itself a radical exercise of creative expression.