Clouds, cables and country codes: why digital infrastructure is anything but neutral – and what it means to build a website in a fractured world.
"If Web Domains Were Countries"
My best friend Colette and I built our first website when we were about 10. Both our dads believed in the democratisation the early internet offered and wanted to give us the tools to participate. Written in a text editor with HTML, inline CSS and graphics made in ClarisWorks. Call me nostalgic, but I’ve always preferred a digital presence that is hand-coded.
But this isn’t just personal preference. In fact, hand-coding meant autonomy, understanding and experimentation. For me, it was a form of creative expression and technical empowerment.