280: GeoCities Memory with Jill Blackmore Evans

Diana Varma
6 days ago
2 min read

Weeeeeeeee!

In today’s episode we’re heading further down the rabbit hole—where one episode leads to the next, and new ideas lie around every corner.

In the two previous episodes in this series, I spoke with Amanda Breeze of TRIPPER Magazine (#273) where she mentioned George Wylesol’s incredible grown-up choose-your-own-adventure book, taking inspiration for her own magazine’s navigational features.

So I reached out to George to learn more about his publishing and illustration work, most notably, about the book just mentioned, called 2120 (#276), as well as the ways that Internet culture is a source of inspiration in his work, and how he longs for the nostalgia of early web culture and GeoCities websites… which leads us to today.

So here we are, three episodes deep with the opportunity to begin today where we last left off, speaking with the creator GeoCities Memory, a personal and scholarly project designed to capture some of the most interesting examples of websites in Web 1.0.

Jill Blackmore Evans is a British-Canadian researcher, writer, and curator based in Berlin. She recently completed an MA in Digital Media at Goldsmiths, University of London, focusing on the digital ruins and resurrections of Web 1.0, in particular early personal websites and online communities. She is also head of curation at Pexels (part of Canva), one of the largest free photo and video libraries on the web.

In this conversation, you’ll hear all about GeoCities as a platform, as well as what Jill has found to be surprisingly similar about the web now vs. 20-30 years ago, as well as what feels different. She explains the interesting links between the maturation of the web and colonization and control, pondering “Is the Internet forever?” Finally, Jill and I ask and answer big questions about digital ownership and if future generations will event want what we’ve created online.

Let’s see where this conversation takes us…