The year is 1999, and I’m happily clicking away on a behemoth of a beige box desktop computer. I’m carefully linking HTML pages together, forming a complex and intricate choose-your-own-adventure story. Click here to go deeper into the woods. Click here to rest in the abandoned cabin. Each choice leads to another branching path through my narrative hypertext labyrinth.

Back then, the web was an experimental wild west. Website aesthetics were limited only to their creator’s imagination. We had dancing gifs and psychedelic light shows. We had hot pink text on a yellow background that burned your eyes out of your head. And we had iframes, nested in tables meant for text, that we slotted sliced up images around to create a dollhouse for our pixel art. Yes, that last one was also me.

But then everything changed. It started with the homogenized aesthetic of chronological blogs. Then social media stole any originality that remained and bound our attention to the mighty algorithm.

Hypertextualization was an exciting aspect of the early web. Media had been mostly linear until this point (magazines, newspapers, television). Depending on your age, you may take it for granted, but hypertext allowed us to create non-linear narratives through the linking of ideas. If you ever lose hours falling down Wikipedia rabbit holes, that may help you understand why hypertext was such an exciting prospect.

I started my communication master’s program with a completely different path in mind. My original topic didn’t fit my first paper assignment so I chose one of my other interests, the internet and its disappointing demise. That sent me down an academic rabbit hole of surveillance, privacy, instrumentalized algorithms, data breaches, and invasions of privacy. It’s inspired a passion in me that I can’t let go of, and I’m feeling a sense of purpose that I haven’t felt in a long time.

However, my undergraduate degree is in psychology, not computer science. So I have a lot to learn on that front over the next two years as I build my capstone. I figure there are plenty of others out there who would benefit from clear and concise information on digital rights and the ways technology impacts privacy and agency.

Volition is an independent publication exploring how the technology that permeates our daily lives impacts our freedom, privacy, and personal autonomy.

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