Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Wednesday Section

"The least recently modified page is offered to readers as a historical document within a context that complicated the very grounds of historicity (126)."


Gitelman's quote above illustrates how the constant drive to upgrade complicated historicity of the web. Just as the the way in which the page is presented complicates its status as historical document, the constant drive to upgrade, thus change your interface medium, poses problems for the internet as the "largest document" in existence. The interface, perhaps by problematizing its historicity, is very important in shaping the web's message as well as its social implications and functions. This is why I think that the claim of many anti-IE6 blogtivists that for the internet to move on internet explorer 6 must die, although I make no claim to the validity of the message, its premise isn't so far fetched from what Gitelman is arguing, in that the interface medium complicates what is (re)presented's history and thus presence as whole (if something has a history, then it must have remained one thing, for when something ceases to be, its history has ended).

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