Broad Band
Page 29
“I was happy in my world”: Wendy Hall, interviewed by Jim Al-Khalili, October 8, 2013, The Life Scientific, BBC Radio 4.
“I began to see the future”: Hall, interview with the author, January 18, 2017.
“One professor told me in public”: Ibid.
They bombed the boat: “1979: IRA Bomb Kills Lord Mountbatten,” On This Day August 27, BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/27/newsid_2511000/2511545.stm.
“Their spare time, of which they have a lot”: “1986: Punks in Romsey,” Domesday Reloaded, BBC, www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday/dblock/GB-432000-120000/page/4.
the library inherited some: Web Science Trust, “Professor Wendy Hall: Making Links,” 50:28, filmed July 14, 1997, posted to YouTube March 12, 2017, https://youtu.be/cFa3e-VkgMk.
“The archivist came to see me”: Hall, interview with the author, January 18, 2017.
“Links in themselves are a valuable store”: W. Hall and D. Simmons, “An Open Model for Hypermedia and Its Application to Geographical Information Systems,” Proceedings of Eurographics ’92, Cambridge, UK.
“the whole foundation of hypertext”: Nicole Yankelovich, interview with author, January 9, 2017.
“If I write something and if it doesn’t work”: Cathy Marshall, interview with the author, January 11, 2017.
the summer she matriculated: Cathy Marshall, “The Freshman: Confessions of a CalTech Beaver,” in No Middle Initial, February 25, 2011, http://ccmarshall.blogspot.com.
“my housewifing skills”: Cathy Marshall, interview with the author, December 19, 2016.
whorehouse keeping down the “fucking overhead”: Ibid.
corduroy beanbag chairs: One, a corduroy number in an unmistakably seventies ocher, is on display at the Computer History Museum, alongside a video of the software engineer Adele Goldberg talking about how difficult it was to sit on the beanbag chairs while pregnant. “Once you sunk in,” she explains, “you couldn’t jump up.” Which is to say, there weren’t very many women at Xerox PARC. But those who were there did exceptional things, www.computerhistory.org/revolution/input-output/14/348/2300.
“The thing I loved most about PARC”: Marshall, interview with the author, December 19, 2016.
Her partner, Judy Malloy, a poet: Cathy Marshall and Judy Malloy, “Closure Was Never a Goal of This Piece,” in Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace, ed. Lynn Cherny and Elizabeth Reba Weise (Seattle: Seal Press, 1996), 64–65.
“the way you wrote papers”: Marshall, interview with the author, January 11, 2017.
Hypertext is to text: Rob Swigart, “A Writer’s Desktop,” in The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design, eds. Brenda Laurel (Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1990), 140.
NoteCards became a vital tool: Randall H. Trigg and Peggy M. Irish, “Hypertext Habitats: Experiences of Writers in NoteCards,” HYPERTEXT ’87, Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Hypertext, 89–108.
In 1987, Apple released: Apple’s idea of digital notecards was strikingly similar to what was being developed at Xerox PARC, but it might have been in the water, too—borrowing a familiar office metaphor was “one of those ideas that could be pervasive,” Cathy says, democratically.
“rueful sense that this was”: Esther Dyson, Release 1.0, November 25, 1987.
“The hypertext conferences were lovely”: Hall, interview with the author, January 18, 2017.
“Computer science has always marginalized”: Marshall, interview with the author, January 11, 2017.
“There were little islands”: Ibid.
NoteCards allowed multiple arrangements: Trigg and Irish, “Hypertext Habitats,” 89–108.
“difficult to articulate within the bounds”: Catherine C. Marshall, Frank M. Shipman III, James H. Coombs, “VIKI: Spatial Hypertext Supporting Emergent Structure,” ECHT ’94, Proceedings of the 1994 ACM European Conference on Hypermedia technology, 13–23.
“spatial holding patterns”: Alison Kidd, “The Marks Are on the Knowledge Worker,” CHI ’94, Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 186–91.
The conference floor, a hotel reception: “List of Demonstrators: Hypertext ’91,” World Wide Web Consortium, www.w3.org/Conferences/HT91/Denoers.html.
ten-thousand-dollar jet-black NeXT cube: Interestingly, a female student on a one-year work placement at CERN, Nicola Pellow, had written a no-frills, text-based Web browser that could run on any computer—the Line Mode browser—but it was utilitarian, and none too flashy. Berners-Lee was willing to lug the NeXT across the globe in order to present the concept of a graphical Web site.
“He said you needed an Internet connection”: Marshall, interview with the author, December 19, 2016.
“I was looking at it”: Hall, interview with the author, January 18, 2017.
“That was all considered counter”: Marshall, interview with the author, December 19, 2016.
“hypertext-like interface”: Lynda Hardman, “Hypertext ’91 Trip Report,” ACM SIGCHI Bulletin 24, no. 3 (July 1, 1992).
Cathy Marshall proposed that: Frank M. Shipman III, Catherine C. Marshall, and Mark LeMere, “Beyond Location: Hypertext Workspaces and Non-Linear Views,” in Proceedings of ACM Hypertext ’99, Darmstadt, Germany, 121–30.
“I’m not sure exactly how to describe it”: Wendy Hall, “Back to the Future with Hypertext: A Tale of Two or Three Conferences,” in Proceedings of ACM 18th Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia 2007, Manchester, UK, 179–180.
according to a 2013 study: Jason Hennessey and Steven Xijin, “A cross disciplinary study of link decay and the effectiveness of mitigation techniques,” BMC Bioinformatics201314 (Suppl. 14): S5. http://bmcbioinformatics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2105-14-S14-S5.
“Claire’s writing a book about me”: Dame Wendy Hall, interview with the author, March 1, 2017.
“through a Microcosm viewer”: Ibid.
didn’t suffer from dead links: Les Carr, Wendy Hall, Hugh Davis, and Rupert Hollom, “The Microcosm Link Service and Its Application to the World Wide Web,” in Proceedings of the First World-Wide Web Conference, 1994, Geneva.
“links to many different destinations”: Hall, interview with the author, March 1, 2017.
“By enhancing the Web”: Carr et al., “The Microcosm Link Service.”
“People used to say”: Hall, interview with the author, March 1, 2017.
“The Web has shown us”: Web Science Trust, “Professor Wendy Hall: Making Links.”
“We are now, twenty-seven years after”: Hall, interview with the author, February 28, 2017.
“That was the core of Microcosm”: Ibid.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: MISS OUTER BORO
“Communications media often seem”: Abbate, Inventing the Internet, 5.
“I didn’t have any interest in programming”: Bowe, interview with the author, July 26, 2016.
“science fiction, women’s rights: “Between PLATO and the Social Media Revolution,” May 10, 1983, http://just.thinkofit.com/between-plato-and-the-social-media-revolution.
including men impersonating women: David R. Woolley, “PLATO: The Emergence of Online Community,” in Social Media Archaeology and Poetics, ed. Judy Malloy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 115.
Trying LSD for the first time: Marisa Bowe, “Wednesday September 18, 1974,” Staff Homepages, Word.com, http://web.archive.org/web/19970615070535/http://www.word.com:80/newstaff/mbowe/one/date30b.html.
“Donald and Ivana Trump”: Marisa Bowe, “When I Grow Up,” Vice.com, November 30, 2004, www.vice.com/read/when-I-v11n3.
“This is just like PLATO”: Bowe, interview with the author, July 26, 2016.
“I’m allergic to the Grateful Dead”: Digital Archaeology, “www.word.com, circa 1995,” 5:18, posted to YouTube June 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxEhqmpymnQ.
“I l
ogged on to Echo”: Bowe, interview with the author, July 26, 2016.
“the idea that you could converse”: Ibid.
“They felt sorry for me”: Ibid.
“She makes me spit out my coffee”: Horn, Cyberville, 21.
“She knows she’s smart”: Ibid., 78.
“Henry James of the Alley”: Kait and Weiss, Digital Hustlers, 78.
“It was like a mini-celebrity”: Bowe, interview with the author, July 26, 2016.
“The video art scene was overrun”: Jaime Levy, interview with the author, August 6, 2016.
“on a Citibank scholarship”: Jaime Levy, “Web Content Producer,” in Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs, eds. John Bowe, Marisa Bowe, and Sabin Streeter (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000), 364.
“I think she saw the opportunity”: Levy, interview with the author, August 6, 2016.
“if you hate it, take the files off”: Jaime Levy, “Jaime Levy and Electronic Publishing from Life and Times KCET in 1993,” 5:33, posted to YouTube June 2015, https://youtu.be/t5aQCQ7-WYU.
“We called it Smell-o-vision”: Ibid.
“my, sorta, digital graffiti”: Ibid.
Jaime’s disks, packaged on floppy: Jaime Levy, UX Strategy: How to Devise Innovative Digital Products That People Want (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2015), 119–22.
six thousand copies at six bucks a pop: Jaime Levy, “Dateline NBC—‘Can You Be a Millionaire? featuring Jaime Levy (2000),’” 10:19, posted to YouTube September 2016, https://youtu.be/v__oMcjFkI0.
“I was the Kurt Cobain”: Austin Bunn, “Upstart Start-ups,” Village Voice, November 11, 1997, www.villagevoice.com/news/upstart-start-ups-6423803.
“Jaime really knew how to present herself”: Kait and Weiss, Digital Hustlers, 79.
She was a hacker through: “Designer Dossier: Jaime Levy, Cyberslacker,” Computer Player, June 1994, www.ehollywood.net/presskit/computerplayer/body.htm.
“If you have never seen”: Levy, “Jaime Levy and Electronic Publishing from Life and Times KCET in 1993.”
“He just really wanted to party”: Levy, interview with the author, Los Angeles, August 6, 2016.
“bonehead interface design”: “Designer Dossier: Jaime Levy, Cyberslacker.”
she was often mistaken for a janitor: “IBM’S Cyberslacker,” New York, June 13, 1994, http://jaimelevy.com/press/newyork2.htm.
“Who’s going to buy this shit?”: Levy, interview with the author, August 6, 2016.
“Once the browser came out”: Ibid.
She quit her day job: Andrew Smith, Totally Wired: The Wild Rise and Crazy Fall of the First Dotcom Dream (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012).
Multimillion-dollar startups: Kait and Weiss, Digital Hustlers, 225–27.
Over two adjoining warehouses: We Live in Public.
“Josh Harris always says he didn’t copy me”: Levy, interview with the author, August 6, 2016.
“principled slackers, arty punk rockers”: Michael Indergaard, Silicon Alley: The Rise and Fall of a New Media District (New York: Routledge, 2004), 1.
“That’s all that was up there”: Levy, interview with the author, August 6, 2016.
“Nineteen ninety-five is cool”: Vanessa Grigoriadis, “Silicon Alley 10003,” New York, March 6, 2000, http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/Internet/2285.
“It turned us all into apostles”: Kait and Weiss, Digital Hustlers, 47.
“I didn’t know what she meant”: Bowe, interview with the author, July 26, 2016.
“pretend like I’m some super-straight”: Ibid.
Icon thought they’d make millions: Kait and Weiss, Digital Hustlers, 78.
“knew how to approach a medium”: Bowe, interview with the author, July 26, 2016.
“hooked on amateur stuff”: Marisa Bowe, in “Wiring the Fourth Estate: Part One of the FEED Dialog on Web Journalism,” 1996, https://web.archive.org/web/19970225063402/http://www.feedmag.com/96.06dialog/96.06dialog1.html.
Marisa went so far as to publish: The day after her prom: “I can’t stand the word diary, the word reminds me of diarrhea. And of a little pink-frocked, rosy-cheeked, curly-haired, moony-eyed chick writing a daily account of her sweet little heart’s ups & downs.”
Her very first editorial was an abridged life story: Marisa Bowe, “Letter from the Editor,” Word.com, Autumn 1995, http://web.archive.org/web/19990912085004/http://www.word.com/info/letter/index.html.
“What was fundamentally most fascinating”: Bowe, interview with the author, July 26, 2016.
“In the world of Word”: “The Thirty Most Powerful Twentysomethings in America: Jaime Levy,” Swing magazine, January 1996, http://jaimelevy.com/press/swing.htm.
“Even the name ‘Webmate’”: Bowe, interview with the author, July 26, 2016.
Word was logging ninety-five thousand: Steve Silberman, “Word Down: The End of an Era,” Wired, March 11, 1998, https://web.archive.org/web/20080425015225/http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/1998/03/10829.
Newsweek announced Word: “So What’s a Web Browser, Anyway?” New York Times, August 14, 1995, http://jaimelevy.com/press/newyorktimes.htm.
“Beavis and Butt-head of the Internet”: Michael Kaplan, “Word Up?!,” Digital Creativity, June–July 1996, 37.
“more like a rock band”: Kait and Weiss, Digital Hustlers, 79.
“She would literally hiss about text”: Marisa Bowe, interview with the author, August 29, 2016.
“people who were getting filthy rich”: Bowe, interview with the author, August 29, 2016.
“All the attention was on me”: Levy, interview with the author, August 6, 2016.
“Jaime Levy has the last Word”: Jason Calcanis, “Cybersurfer’s Silicon Alley,” PAPER, March 1996, 122.
“I’ve never been a person to last”: Ibid.
192 “To pass that up” Bowe, interview with the author, August 29, 2016.
“the death of the Web as we knew it”: Indergaard, Silicon Alley, 1.
“was one of these Japanese kids”: Bowe, interview with the author, July 26, 2016.
“He’s an artist”: Ibid.
“We were essentially artists and bohemians”: Ibid.
sold ads at around $12,500 a pop: Kaplan, “Word Up?!”
“For us, the creative team”: Naomi Clark, interview with the author, March 25, 2017.
“Going public was the business model”: Bowe, interview with the author, July 26, 2016.
“D. B. Cooper–ish disappearance”: “Hit & Run 05.31.01,” www.suck.com/daily/2001/05/31.
Wired called it the end of an era: Silberman, “Word Down.”
“It made so little sense”: Clark, interview with the author, March 25, 2017.
Their new owner, Zapata Corporation: Lisa Napoli, “From Oil to Fish to the Internet: Zapata Tries Another Incarnation,” New York Times, May 18. 1998.
took out full-page ads: Kaitlin Quistgaard, “On the Edge and Under the Wing,” Wired, September 1, 1998, https://web.archive.org/web/20101107173917/http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/1998/09/14682.
“subgeniuses who smoked too much pot”: Silberman, “Word Down.”
“I was like, okay, why don’t we”: Levy, interview with the author, August 6, 2016.
“production studio for the Internet”: Levy, “Web Content Producer,” 364.
The office was a fake-out: Bumming around Electronic Hollywood in those days were Psychic TV’s Genesis P-Orridge, who makes a cameo in the Dateline piece, Clay Shirky, and “Tanya,” whose last name Jaime can’t remember but is pretty sure was in the virtual dildo business.
Jaime expressed this ongoing hustle in a rap: Grigoriadis, “Silicon Alley 10003.”
“Welcome to MTV’s online”: Jaime Levy, “CyberSlacker–Episode 7 (Job Hunting Blues),” 5:41, posted to YouTube May 11, 20
12, https://youtu.be/9rjVSRssz04.
“It looks like a jar of salsa”: Jaime Levy, “CyberSlacker, Episode 8 (The Secret Sauce),” 6:05, posted to YouTube May 11, 2012, https://youtu.be/DbB0x BX9yEE
it went public in 1999: Indergaard, Silicon Alley, 149.
not being cool enough: Ibid., 139.
“We pissed away almost all the money”: Levy, “Web Content Producer,” 367.
“Something was coming to a head”: Levy, interview with the author, August 6, 2016.
Internet companies running out of money: Indergaard, Silicon Alley, 142.
the NASDAQ dropped below: Kait and Weiss, Digital Hustlers, 297.
“Within two months”: Levy, interview with the author, August 6, 2016.
“We ate from the trough”: Charlie Leduff, “Dot-Com Fever Followed by Bout of Dot-Com Chill; What a Long, Strange Trip: Pseudo.Com to Dot.Nowhere,” New York Times, October 27, 2000, www.nytimes.com/2000/10/27/nyregion/dot-com-fever-followed-bout-dot-com-chill-what-long-strange-trip-pseudocom.html?_r=0.
Razorfish ousted its founders: Indergaard, Silicon Alley, 150.
“tombs built for Chinese emperors”: Ibid., 154.
“our game plan for the next six months”: Levy, interview with the author, August 6, 2016.
“Normally someone like me”: Bowe, interview with the author, August 29, 2016.
“That’s bullshit,” Jaime says: Levy, interview with the author, August 6, 2016.
“Smallest violin for the fucking cyberkids”: Ibid.
“coming after the collapse”: Indergaard, Silicon Alley, 160.
by 2003, unemployment in New York: Ibid., 159.
“fucked up and left it on the subway”: Levy, interview with the author, August 6, 2016.
“I started thinking of it as being”: Bowe, interview with the author, July 26, 2016.
“We figured that in the end”: “Hit & Run 05.31.01.”
CHAPTER TWELVE: WOMEN.COM
“wanting to get an online community started”: Rhine, interview with the author, February 8, 2017.
“access information and resources instantly”: Women’s WIRE, Women’s Information Resource & Exchange brochure (c. 1993).