When my father pulled our new 9600bps modem out of its box in the summer of 1991, and installed it in the family computer, everything changed. We were not alone in taking that first curious step towards a more networked society, but what distinguishes my story is that my generation is one of the last to be able to remember that exact moment when the Internet entered our lives. For the generations after us, this speed and interactivity will have always been there, but for us there was a very obvious shift -- a "things will never be the same" moment -- that deeply informs the way we work, and the way we design.

I have spent my life trying to reconcile two opposing reactions to this shift. On the one hand, I react as a programmer -- the grown-up version of my twelve-year-old self, who immediately used that dial-up connection to log into Prodigy, and to teach herself html -- and find that the Internet world is a fascinating social experiment, teeming with new ideas and accumulated knowledge. On the other hand I react as a designer -- a person who values the craft and skill inherent in handmade experiences -- and feel a deep sense of loss for the more analog world that I had such a short time to inhabit. Pervading both of these responses is an awareness that technology, the web in particular, is taking over certain aspects of design with increasing speed and efficiency, but not much soul.

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