COM 380: History and Culture of the 1990s internet

Final project description

From the syllabus

Your final project will let you select the aspect of 1990s internet culture that most interests you and research it in depth. It can be a notable figure in the development/history of the internet, a specific technology, a cultural artifact, or pretty much anything that you’re interested in and want to research. You’ll combine archived materials, outside research, period media, and contemporary reflections to create an analysis on that topic and make connections to how we use the internet currently.

I’ll help you narrow down a topic and give you some preliminary feedback along with some suggestions for how to approach your research. I’ll also take a look at any draft materials you want feedback on.

Your project will take the form of a 1990s-era website (you’ll learn the basics of how to write HTML and CSS this semester). I’ll also show you how to use GPT to help with markup and creating styles for your site.

The goal of this project is to take a deep dive into a topic that interests you and gain an understanding and appreciation for developing websites during that era (albeit with modern tools; I won’t make you use Microsoft FrontPage 95). As a fringe benefit, you will gain the ability to reminisce with your Xennial-aged colleagues.

Research requirements

I expect you to conduct research similar to the materials I pulled for the course reading list. Your sources should include the following, but you can reference as many sources as you like when preparing your deliverables.

I’m looking for meaningful engagement with these sources. You can’t just write a paragraph and drop a nebulous citation at the end of it.

If you use AI to help you locate sources, you’d best verify that they exist. Hallucinated sources and quotations will be heavily penalized.

Length requirements

The length and work put into the project should be comparable to that of a term paper or feature piece in a magazine and should give a thorough treatment of the research topic. The specific length of text should be around 6–8 pages or so (where "pages" means the typical length of a page in a traditional paper, not six to eight html pages on your site), but consideration will be given for other work that doesn’t produce written analysis (like assembling pertinent examples and screen shots, curating a list of media, etc.). If you have questions on whether you are “doing enough” for the final project, I’m happy to give you guidance when you submit your topic.

Website requirements

You can take one of two routes here.

  1. If you like, I have resources I can share on how to make a website via GitHub. One or two tutorial videos and you should have no problem setting that up. It’s also a useful skill that you can use in your professional life.
  2. If that’s more work than you’d like to undertake, you can check out Neocities (an updated version of the popular 90s/early-2000s website building tool Geocities). It has an in-browser HTML editor and allows you to manage files by uploading them all in one repository.

Either way is fine by me, but those are the only two work methods I’ll accept. In order to learn and apply your knowledge of HTML, I want you actually editing HTML and not using a “drag-and-drop” editor.

The website should evoke a 90s aesthetic, but focus on the content over the look. If you need some help with styling, use an LLM to help generate starter CSS that you can personalize.

Work process

Submit your topic and an outline or short (incomplete) draft on or around 11/13. I’ll give you some feedback and answer any questions that you have about the scope of your project. I’ll make a project page on Canvas with a link to an assignment folder where you can submit a PDF.

Resources

To be added