Vu d’ici turns 7 today

It’s march 12th 2002.

I am sitting at my desk, its late at night, Hamburg time. I am sick of working in the web field, after all, i ended up web designer by accident. It seems to me like the web has turned out to be what TV has been for years in my parent’s living room: a station used to sell us products we dont need, an obstrusive and controling entertainment device.

As everyone else, i’m hooked on the internet. So i sit and browse, hoping to discover something life changing. And it does come that night, when i end up visiting caterina.net for the first time.

There, the format of the site is similar to a personal digital diary, noted by date. The design is quite simple – well, there is a grid, that’s all. Looking around, i see that there is a content management system behind all of this, allowing easy posting of entries (easy like my mom can manage it), on which readers can comment. Each text seems archived orderly (i women like ordered things), and there is even place for images (by this i mean great art, not your pet’s picture). I search, and discover that behind all that lies a personal publishing software.

Woah!

I did not slept so well that night, and it was the internet’s fault.

On the following days i researched. What was that tool that allowed someone to easily post thoughts on the web, in such a simple fashion? I found out about Movable Type and GrayMatter, examined both, and turned out to my boyfriend to install one of them on our server, overexcited about the visions that where rapidly spreading on my mind – with this new tool, i could use the web, we could use the web, to talk together.

and it all started there. In one night, i went from sick of the internet to wildly in love with the internet. I started to have a voice of my own, shared with thousands of other voices out there, from around the world. I started to connect with souls, and ideas about the future of the web went on, racing in my head.

Unfortunately, this is 2002, and no one else in my immediate german surrounding cared. Trying to share the good news about blogs, i looked like a weird nerd to everyone (looking like a neird is enough in itself, you dont want to feel weird over it). So life went on.

In 2003, back from germany, same desolating fact over north america: no one knows what a blog is.

In 2005, i left the company i was working for as a web art director who became web art director by accident, and kicked of my own business, where i could read and write about blogs and share the Web 2.0 hype with some other weird nerds i found on my way.

Between that time and now, the hype went on from nothing, to big, and then to huge. The hype went actually so huge that it hurted my eyes, and my feelings. In the hands of marketers, the connected computer was becoming, like the old TV, an obtrusive, controlling, advertising selling device. Insted of a crowd of curious, artsy weird nerds, i found myself surrounded by thirsty marketers who’s world of ideas i did not want to share. In fact, i’m sleeping on a my only self published copy of The Socialy Acceptable Marketing Manifesto known by myself as SAM, and would not dare to share it on what has become the web, afraid of being at the center of a blog fight where i dont want to be (in fact, at this time of the year, a tropical climate is where i’d like to find myself, not writing a blog post about my blog’s 7 birthday).

But life is what it is, and i am now this curious/weird/nerd/artist who create and make things with what is there. I am looking forward for the next 7 years of this blog.

It all started there.