Weblog Entry - 11/08/2001: "the golden years"

11/08/2001 Entry: the golden years

"On the Web, nothing stays the same -- it either grows or it rots." -- Caleb

That's Thursday's quote of the day, randomly featured by a perl script I wrote in '96. J. Caleb Donaldson was Gardener-in-Chief of Cyborganic at the time he wrote that comment. I think I was on the set at The Site (ZDTV's first television show, where I was webmistress), and I think I was goofing off, hanging out on The Space Bar chatting, where he wrote it. And has probably long since forgotten it.

I'm not sure how much of that is true, and how much is an overly romanticized memory. The only thing I'm sure of is the attribution to Caleb, because I was so tickled by the comment that I put it immediately in my quote file. It's a bit ironic, I guess, because the link I used for his name was his GeekCereal profile...which has long since rotted.

Somewhere right around then, everything changed.

At the time, I was living alone in San Francisco, and I'd been swept up in the burgeoning, trendy, internet culture explosion for two years. I wanted to be the Beatrice of the technological age, leading the Dantes of the 21st century into the heavenly web. I'd been to a Thursday Dinner, networked my way to a job (which I left three months later, for something that sounded more exciting), and met some of the movers and shakers. I knew what Hotwired's offices looked like (when I worked at Organic, which was just upstairs, I once got off the elevator on the wrong floor. While Hotwired's floor looked only a little weird from the stairwell, from the elevator, everything was painted Scary Fluorescent Colors). I'd worked for awhile in a web-services sweatshop -- in a building with a *real* clothing-manufacturing setup on one of the floors (I'm assuming they paid their fleet of bent-over immigrant women better than what people mean when they refer to a real live sweatshop). I'd worked on the Levi's website, back when it was a place you could find experimental video from unknown artists, rather than just a big advertisement. Next, I worked in a large, drafty building where an artist had painted swirls and dribbles on the floor, but racks and racks of state-of-the-art equipment were down a short hallway. I wore a leather jacket every day. I was convinced that once art met technology, something magical would happen. I was ready to share my taste of heaven, and I thought the melding of the web and of television might be the place to do it.

The problem with the rapid evolution of technology is that these golden times are so brief.

It's not really all that surprising that I moved to Seattle in 1997. Besides the fact that I had a lover up here, that is. Not only was there a very strong pull north, there wasn't much keeping me in SF anymore. The dream was -- well, not dead, but there didn't seem to be much of a place for me in it, anymore. My show wasn't being renewed -- and it had become clear that despite all the technological creative freedom I'd been promised when I took the job, I was really just a prop for other people's egos, anyway. The Little Garden, SF's coolest ISP, had been bought by best.com. Cyborganic had gone untended. All the web-based-serials I read were dead. I'd found that I lacked the critical skill of artful ego-stroking, that no-one I was working with was actually interested in creative collaboration, and that keeping up with the cutting-edge of technology was too expensive. I couldn't figure out where the magic was, anymore.

So I fled.

In retrospect, it was exactly the right thing to do. The last five years have been the best of my life. This dream, like many others dreams I've had, has grown up. Like most of my dreams, it's become less glamorous with age. I'm not dramatically changing the world, but I believe that the work I do changes the world in small but important ways. I've picked up a new art -- photography -- and I am using the web as an important part of getting my art to my audience (hey, that part hasn't changed much at all, except that in the original dream, I rarely saw myself as the artist). Most of all, I'm getting a sense of personal satisfaction in my work. I'm creating things I'm proud of. I never had that before.

And I wonder if Caleb is getting that now, too. I hope so -- I consider myself privileged to have known him, however breifly, before everything changed.

Posted by sev @ 03:59 PM PST |

insert witty comment here