I think the older we become the more fondly we look to the past to remember the "good ol' days." As I've recently bypassed the four decades of life milestone, I find myself doing this quite often. Usually it's the nostalgia of the 80’s from television to movies along with seeing arcades & pinball machines on every corner, but that also refers to the earlier internet.

This doesn't pertain to the days of dial up and the walled garden of ISP's like America Online (although that was a time that helped sculpt my future) but more the earlier 2000's. There was a technology that existed called macro media flash and fireworks/after effects, etc which created some of the most beautifully innovative websites I'd ever seen. And although that was almost two decades ago, nothing seen today even compares to it. Literally nothing.

There was one man in my opinion, at the center of this revolution who started a design firm called "2Advanced Studios" and that man's name was Eric Jordan. The first time I ventured to 2advanced.com I was absolutely blown away. My exact words were, "Whoa! I didn't know the internet could do that." The only way to explain it would be to say that the pages seemed artificially alive. They reacted to every move of your mouse. Menus and navigation bars displayed incredible animations and as one page was wiped away another was created in its place as if by magic as you traversed the site. I loved it so much I started dabbling in flash myself but only a handful of people were capable of doing anything even close to what Eric and his team were. I love digital aesthetics and flash was to the internet what the brush was to Picasso. Eric's artistic genius is still alive today but mostly in broadcasting/commercials along with his music. Just the same however, the internet seems a lot less bright.

Around 2010-ish the "intellects" in silicone valley announced they were slowly going to stop supporting flash in their web browsers because they were worried about using up battery power on their mobile devices (YouTube is what uses up most of mine, go figure). This essentially meant that millions upon millions of people would no longer be capable of seeing what the web SHOULD look like today. With it, innovation and creativity died as well. Today you might see some random video in the background with text in the foreground, but that's about as ground breaking as things get. We went from a beautiful landscape of creativity, colors, motion, and graphics to a static template of garbage. Despite what those at the top of the tech world have given us over the years, most of it is just an annual refresh of slightly upgraded technology in their current lineup of devices to keep their stock prices intact. Who cares?

I'm not impressed with any of it. Look up "Most innovative websites of 2020“ and have a gander. That's the best we're capable of now, and it's not unlike anything else out there. Web designers just don't have the tools they need to really wow anyone anymore. This includes myself. Even with Gilded Pendulum, I can only pretty it up so much. I can't make pages load intuitively or give you an incredible visual representation of what I'd like to really show you. As far as I'm concerned there's nothing more tragic in today's world than wasted talent. Or in this case, no longer being able to engage your talents because a corporation took away your paint brush.

This is what that world use to look like from the man himself:

The Dystopian Internet