Gardens at the edge of the internet: Online ARIs keeping the handmade web alive

The internet used to be an unmanicured place: opening Netscape, messaging on ICQ or MSN and jumping from GeoCities page to GeoCities page with a glitter cursor in tow. This was a handmade web where worlds were crafted by people untrained in design or user experience, people who were using the web for self-expression alone. As American poet and cyberlibertarian John Perry Barlow says, the internet ‘is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.’

More from this Issue

compost: compose

Organic matter turns into compost when it breaks down.
After brewing my cup of tea, I place wet tea leaves into my kitchen’s compost bin along with other food scraps, which I later add to my garden’s compost.
Compost over compost.
Time over time.
I write these words at exactly one year of ongoing brutality and genocide in Gaza, during the 76th year of Zionist occupation of Palestine.
I can’t help but think of what else belongs in a compost bin.
Zionism.
Militarism.
Capitalism.
Colonialism.
Extractivism.
Expansionism.
What other words that end with ‘ism’?
Which outdated world views, ideologies, systems and structures belong in a compost bin? What skeletons and bones need to break down to birth something new?

Rasha Tayeh