Web Fashion

It's strange--this world they call the "blogosphere." I say, "they" because I find it a bit silly. However, it's become quite fashionable these days and everyone has one and they're actually really damn informative; even if the cutsie hipster names seem to imply that they're all simply diaries. I also find it phenomenally interesting how certain blogs create trends all over the Internet. Remember when all the big websites used the two-tone colors (which I think were a product of XML)? And those really small rectangular links?

It seems that--as in fine arts--the World Wibe Web, has finally entered into that minimalistic state. In film, it is the state where Andy Warhol decided to film an eight-hour hardon (well, that's what he called it). Or in painting, it is that period [insert: oddly enough, I found an example of the two-tone color I was looking for when I clicked on a minimalism link] which stresses single colored, or few colored, or structured, or single medium works. Steve Reich is a man who epotimizes minimalism in music. But what's so strange about minimalism on the Web is that while the sites have a purer, crisper and minimal look--they actually provide more information. This fascinates the hell out of me. Even with my post here, you can spend hours looking at all the links. It's all in the code these days. Content will always reign, but it seems that code is far more important than looks these days. And I really like that. I'm trying to gear my site more and more minimalistic.

I was looking at Jason Kottke's latest post and he's totally clued into this notion. Look at how the network works on the Web: it's really a huge circle of millions of people, all inter-connected. Connectivity and communication and information is getting simpler and simpler. And more importantly, by minimizing the look and content of Websites, publishers have found more efficient methods of organizing their data (I hope Blogger will hurry up and start tagging posts with categories). I really like where the Internet is going.