Nick on Neocities

It took a moment before I realised that this website has a philosophy.

While I had not really pieced together all the thoughts, in recent years I have been rethinking how I engaged online. Once I was a relatively prolific user of Twitter and Facebook, today my only social media account is on LinkedIn. Much of our engagement online is now framed through social media platforms to whom we are less customers than the product to sell to advertisers.

Over the past 25+ years I have run websites, but somehow in recent times the production of them has felt both impersonal and increasingly more complicated. The alternative to this complication has been use of AI in web design, which while impressive is not as precise as I'd like. The rapid rise of generative artificial intelligence is exciting to watch and has clearly already brought benefits. However, along with the good comes infinite scope to manipulate, mislead and drown users in so much inaccurate content that one never trusts an image of video again.

Indeed, linked to the rise of AI is a greater need for individual expression. Whether it is desirable is debatable, but we are living through an era in which there is a sharp focus on the individual whether that is a populist politician, a social media influencer or just someone trying to be noticed enough to achieve their potential. With so much of our external image framed by the parameters decided by big tech, there is an appeal to being able to produce something a bit different.

Perhaps the final factor is a desire to be less reliant on 'big tech', this has led me to make more use of alternative tech options. This is not based on a perception that all tech barons are baddies, though some do make me wonder at times, it is simple market economics. It is good for innovation and development to have healthy competition.

I do have a nostalgia for the early days of the mass participation internet, one of component of that was building websites on the long defunct Geocities. And so, here I am, on Neocities to experiment a bit. To see whether my recollection of the old web (no cheeky comments please) is as good as I remember and if in 2026, it still offers a way to do the simple thing the internet is supposed to do, allow me to talk to the world, rather than just be a 24/7 consumer.

Welcome to my new 'old' website!