Netscape’s interface-first browsing marked the death of postmodernism in 1995.

Evidence

Zara Dinnen observes, “When code is working properly, we don’t see it … if source code has been written effectively, it effaces itself.” Similarly, in the ultimate media theory of immediacy, Alexander Galloway diagnoses: “Software is the medium that is not a medium.” Fittingly for our style category pursuant to this negation, N. Katherine Hayles identifies the introduction of the first interface-forward internet browser, Netscape, as a grave transformation of cultural production: “On or about August 1995, postmodernism died.” — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 74

Categorization

• QUESTION: Hayles deliberately echoes Woolf’s famous ‘On or about December 1910 human character changed’ — worth chasing whether this periodization by browser is more rhetorical flourish than structural claim.