New Order: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

New Order, a “general education course for people today,” began with a private workshop held at Workroom, a graphic design studio and publisher, on the day after Christmas in 2016. At this workshop, titled “Document to Document,” participants each chose a favorite book and turned a favorite page into a one-page website. In the process, they experienced the similarities and differences between offline publications—paper books—and online publications—websites. I cannot quite remember how it came about, but looking back, the workshop was certainly one of the seeds from which New Order grew.

In 2019, those scattered seeds were gathered into New Order (Mediabus), a book short enough to read in an hour. That same year, New Order began in earnest with generous support from Studio Pie and Tastehouse, run by young artists including Kwon Sunwoo, Kim Donghee, Don Sunpil, and Park Hyunjung. Fridays, when the course took place, became known as “New Order Day.” Participants, or “friends of New Order,” built their own websites by learning the basic computer languages that make up the web: HTML (HyperText Markup Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and a little JavaScript (JS). New Order approaches working with computer languages—coding—as “practical and conceptual writing.” This is far from a metaphor or metonymy. Away from polished toolbars and icons, coding in a text editor with a blinking cursor is no different from writing. Over the next three years or so, the curriculum was gradually refined alongside established educational institutions, including Paju Typography Institute (2018–21) and Hongik University (2022). By 2023, around 300 “friends” had passed through New Order. They now use computer languages in their everyday lives according to their own desires. Some discovered abilities they had not known they possessed and changed their major or occupation. Others formed collectives and study groups such as After New Order… and Unknown Order.

Although this was not the original intention, one of New Order’s central hashtags is the “handmade web,” advocated in 2015 by the Canadian artist J. R. Carpenter. “People should actively make their own websites. Especially today, making your own website outside social media has suddenly become a radical act. ‘Handmade web’ is a term I devised to encourage this.” I first encountered the term while studying at the School for Poetic Computation (SFPC) in the United States in 2016. It was probably in a class taught by Nick Montfort, an American poet and professor at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Handmade generally refers to objects made by hand or with simple tools rather than machines. These objects take many forms, from very loose to highly elaborate. The handmade web is a facet of the web encompassing websites made and maintained by individuals rather than corporations; websites that may at first seem useless; and websites that challenge conventions surrounding reading, writing, design, ownership, privacy, and more. Its history goes back to the 1990s, the early days of the World Wide Web. Web technologies were also in their infancy then, so websites were usually made by hand. Ready-made templates and website builders did not exist as concepts. Technical limitations were clear, but they encouraged attempts to use constraints from within to overcome them, producing a variety of websites. Not every website could be called “great,” of course, but they were fun, inventive, interesting, and, above all, confident. Until the arrival of Web 2.0, led by social media in the early 2000s, the web itself was the handmade web, and that spirit carries on joyfully to this day. In short, the handmade web is less an exercise in nostalgia than a lively, resistant question directed at today’s excessively fast, large, and commercialized web.

The final class at SFPC was “Make the School You Want to Run.” Taeyoon Choi, who led the class, said: “I hope the schools you propose in this class will operate in the neighborhoods and countries where you live. Even after the School for Poetic Computation is gone someday.” The class lasted three hours in a park beside the Hudson River. The school I proposed was the Ricotta Institute (RI). Its four-week curriculum revolves around ricotta. In the first week, students make ricotta. In the second and third weeks, they write about their ricotta in various forms, including informational texts, fiction, and poetry, and turn the results into websites. In the fourth week, they use those websites to sell their ricotta. This was because I thought, as I still do, that cooking, writing—including coding—marketing, and even branding were worthwhile skills for people today, myself included. After class, a friend asked why I had chosen ricotta. I answered: “Ricotta is delicious, healthy, and, above all, very white.” Perhaps New Order is a beta test for a Ricotta Institute that may open someday.

When you like something, and eventually come to love it, you naturally want to share that beautiful feeling with those around you. For me, New Order is one of several ways of putting that desire into practice. Its ultimate aim is not so much to revive the spirit of the handmade web and learn to build websites using the basic computer languages of the web as to expand our love for ourselves and share it with others through that process. If we can love ourselves deeply, might we not also love others deeply?

What follows is a chronology of a few events surrounding the internet and the web, and a set of stepping stones for tracing something of New Order’s yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Some may find it lacking. Would it be too much to hope that they might instead come to New Order and help add another stone? In any case, it begins in 1989.

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist at the Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN) in Basel, Switzerland, published Information Management: A Proposal, a paper on the World Wide Web, now commonly called the “web.” He imagined documents connected nonlinearly through hyperlinks. As the paper’s title suggests, the web was originally an information management system intended to help researchers consult papers efficiently. In that sense, the web began with printed matter.

In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee released the first web browser, WorldWideWeb. Its name was later changed to Nexus to avoid confusion with the World Wide Web. A web browser is software for viewing websites and the final destination of all web technology. However elegant the code, without a browser it cannot even be viewed.

In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee published the first website. Design was not a major concern on this first website. Against a white background, with black text and underlined blue hyperlinks, Berners-Lee introduced the web in an elegant, playful tone. At the time, however, only Berners-Lee and his colleagues, who could use a web browser, could enjoy it. The server running the website was a NeXTcube made by NeXT Computer, the company founded by Steve Jobs.

In 1992, librarian Jean Armour Polly proposed the term “web surfing.” From then on, people imagined the web as a sea of waves of information. CERN computer scientist Silvano De Gennaro posted a photograph of Les Horribles Cernettes, a parody pop group made up of laboratory employees, on the CERN website. The photograph, showing four women in dresses smiling brightly, is known as the first photograph to appear on the web.

In 1993, at Tim Berners-Lee’s request, CERN released web-related technologies into the public domain. Without that decision, people might have had to pay in some way to use the web. The first version of Mosaic, the first web browser with a graphical interface, was released. The New York Times mentioned the web for the first time: “The web is like a map for finding the buried treasures of the information age.”

In 1994, Yahoo!, which first introduced the form of the portal site, opened. Until the mid-2000s, Yahoo! was the leading search engine and web directory. AT&T unveiled the first banner on the website of HotWired, the predecessor of Wired. The banner, 476 pixels wide and 56 pixels high, carried only the words: “Have you ever clicked your mouse? You will.” Forty-four percent of the people who saw it clicked it, and banners subsequently became a defining feature of 1990s web design. The legendary free web hosting service Geocities opened. Geocities marked a turning point in people’s ability to make their own websites. The first version of the Netscape Navigator web browser was released.

In 1995, Slovenian artist Vuk Ćosić first proposed the term “Net Art.” American programmer Brendan Eich released JavaScript, which made a variety of interactions possible on websites. The Internet Explorer web browser was released. Together with Netscape Navigator, it would divide the browser market for some time. The term “User Experience” first appeared at a conference in Colorado in the United States.

In 1996, Vuk Ćosić released First Screening, known as the first work of net art. Composed of GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) images parodying the form of the first website, it proposed the internet and the web as artistic media. Håkon Wium Lie released CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), a cornerstone of web design. CSS separated content from design, allowing more flexible control of website elements such as typeface, type size, text color, background color, and layout. Macromedia released the first version of its vector-based animation software Flash. American poet Kenneth Goldsmith launched UbuWeb, an archive focused on concrete poetry and other avant-garde art.

In 1997, Macromedia released Dreamweaver, website creation software based on WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get).

In 1998, Google opened. Google began as a research project aimed at finding highly relevant search results using a mathematical algorithm. Called PageRank, the algorithm assessed importance by analyzing relationships between web pages based on cross-references. The name “Google” was a misspelling of “googol,” meaning ten to the hundredth power.

In 1999, Yahoo! acquired Geocities. The resulting Yahoo! Geocities operated for around a decade, until the dot-com bubble burst.

In 2001, Wikipedia opened. It was inspired by the ideas of Ward Cunningham, who first devised the concept of a wiki: a website anyone can edit.

In 2002, Canadian web designer Dave Shea unveiled CSS Zen Garden. A showcase for CSS, it demonstrated how a website could change through CSS files alone while its HTML structure remained the same. People experienced the power, beauty, and limitless possibilities of CSS.

In 2003, WordPress, a leading Content Management System (CMS), was released. Initially a blogging engine focused on writing, it soon introduced themes that made a website’s design easy to change. Although many CMSs have appeared since WordPress, around 40 percent of websites using a CMS today, from personal blogs and designers’ portfolios to major corporate sites, are built with WordPress. Its motto is: “Code is poetry.”

In 2004, Monoskop, describing itself as a “wiki for arts and studies,” opened. Curated by the Netherlands-based artist Dušan Barok, Monoskop provides material on little-known historical facts together with a meticulous index.

In 2005, Britain’s Alex Tew launched The Million Dollar Homepage. On this website, measuring 1,000 by 1,000 pixels—a million pixels in all—Tew sold each pixel for one dollar. The exuberantly commercial website quickly became popular and became an example of successful viral marketing and an internet phenomenon. The last pixels were sold at auction on eBay, putting a million dollars in Tew’s hands through a single website.

In 2006, the verb “to google” entered the dictionary. JavaScript developer John Resig released jQuery, an open-source library that made JavaScript easier to use. Although libraries based on Single Page Applications (SPAs), such as React and Vue.js, appeared later, jQuery’s motto remains worth pondering: “Write less, do more.” Graphic designer and author Daniel Eatock released Indexhibit, a CMS developed with Jeffery Vaska. Emphasizing minimalism in its features and design, Indexhibit was used particularly for portfolios in art and design.

In 2007, Apple released the first iPhone. The moment Steve Jobs launched Safari for iPhone at Macworld, the predecessor of the World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC), websites officially escaped the confines of the desktop.

In 2008, the first version of Google Chrome was released.

In 2009, Yahoo! closed Geocities. The countless websites hosted there suddenly disappeared. Social media took over the space where people had spoken about themselves in their own ways.

In 2010, the iPhone gained a Retina Display. People could now read text on mobile devices as clearly as in print. Web designer Ethan Marcotte introduced the concept of Responsive Web Design in the web magazine A List Apart. “Thoughts on Flash,” published by Steve Jobs on Apple’s homepage, helped bring the age of Flash to a close.

In 2011, Adobe announced Creative Cloud and began offering a subscription service, adding a fixed monthly expense for people who had been using Adobe software.

In 2012, Media Queries became an official standard. One of the basic technologies used to design responsive websites, they allow web pages to be rendered according to a display’s resolution or size.

In 2013, Kyle Drake launched Neocities, carrying on the spirit of Geocities. Once again, people practice the handmade web in a new city. “Neocities brings back the fun, creativity, and independence that made the web great. Our goal is to help people harness the creativity, beauty, and power of making their own websites. Let’s rebuild a web trapped in automation and monotony and make it fun again.”

Even before the pandemic broke out in late 2019, the web, and the internet more broadly, had moved closer to reality or, in some respects, already replaced it. The role of websites as online publications naturally became more prominent. Content that had once lived on scrolls passed through the codex and returned to the scroll. After a brief conversation with ChatGPT, from OpenAI, said to threaten Google’s position, it seems clear that websites will continue to provide useful information and serve as a major means of e-commerce. Mobile devices such as smartphones will become still more important as terminals for viewing websites. This will considerably influence not only website planning but also the design of their appearance and functions. It is also easy to imagine websites integrating technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) to produce results no one has yet thought of. Meanwhile, websites have established themselves as an important medium in art and design. Many exhibitions take place online, and artists use websites to make and introduce work and to connect audiences with it.

At the same time, making websites grows ever more complicated. Yet the basic computer languages at the bottom of the pyramid of web technologies continue to support all the others. Laurel Schwulst said: “Depending on who makes it, a website can be anything. A room, a shelf, a garden, a rock sinking endlessly into the sea…” Exploring other roles and possibilities for websites ultimately falls to individuals who choose to become producers as well as consumers. Whatever the result looks like, the act of giving one’s own content a new order remains the same. I hope New Order can contribute, however modestly, to that first step. Not so differently from the private workshop held at Workroom on the day after Christmas in 2016.