Hi, I’m Glenn Davis.  I was the first web design critic and a major web design influencer in the 1990’s at the beginnings of the World Wide Web.  I’m going to be writing some of the web’s history here, from my perspective.

Before you read these articles, there are a few things you should know about me.  These are things no one knew then, including myself.  Since these articles are going to be as honest as I can make them, these things will come up on occasion.

Let’s start with the big one, shall we?  I’m on the spectrum, as they say.  A few years ago they would have said I have Aspergers, now I’m just classified as having high functioning Autistic Syndrome Disorder.  Strangely, I’m the opposite of many in that I am also an extrovert.

ADHD allows someone to be hyper-focused on things.  Combine that with autistic obsession and you have a large part of me.

I am also a savant. I see things differently.  Give me enough information and I simply know answers or better ways to do things.

The one problem with this is that I have to be interested in the subject. My article, The Web’s Materials, will show you just how interested I was in the web.  It doesn’t start where everyone thinks, either.

Additionally I suffer from Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria.  I crash and lash out when I feel rejected or belittled.  As you’ll see in further articles, this played a part in my role in the web’s design development and the friends I lost along the way.

And lastly, depression has followed me around my entire life.

These articles are going to be as honest as I can make them.  I’ll be talking about the good and the bad.  You’ll probably see a dark side of me you didn’t know was there, or that some of you  who saw that part of me, still remember.  Autistic obsession can be a bitch, even when it’s fleeting.

I’m not trying to blame some of the things that happened on my conditions.  It’s just that now I can look back and understand what happened and why.  I take full responsibility for the bad as well as the good.  I’m going to write about it all.

I’ll change some of the names when needed.  Add a strike through to indicate it’s a fake name.  Some of the names though, can’t be changed.  Just too obvious.

There are a lot of things that haven’t been documented.  I’m going to try to fill in some of the blanks and provide some insights into the development of the web as a design medium. The personal histories along the way also make for some otherwise lost background.

I thought about creating a web history website, inspired by the work of Jay Hoffman.  In the end I decided that these were my stories and that I should tell them here.  Plus, it gives me a reason to have my own personal web playground again.  Expect design changes without notice.

If you were there, then as you read these, I hope you’ll consider sharing your own stories.

It is not ego to say that I, along with a slew of other talented designers and developers helped create the web you are using today.  I was a major influence on the web in the 1990s.  These will be the stories of those years.

Communicating with me.

You may have noticed there is no Contact Me form here.  I have one, it doesn’t look like any other form you have seen, because I’m not a fan of the homogenized web we have today.  Tie that in with the fact that text communication is generally empty for me.

Here are the best ways that I can understand you, and you can understand me.

• In person – In person is content rich for me.  I can understand you better than most anyone else can on levels you don’t even realize you are communicating like your micro-expressions, your eye movements, and your breathing patterns.  Because of that, I can also better communicate with you, because I can feel the reactions to my words.
• Videochat – I prefer Facetime, but can use any of them if needed.
• Telephone – Even just a voice tells a lot, and I can communicate well with you in this medium. I’ve been known to talk for as long as eight hours at a time on phone conversations.  
• Morse Code –  When you have to pay for each letter in a message you tend to make your messages succinct and with only the most needed facts.
• Email – Email will kind of work if I know you well.  But really, for me text is lacking in all the context and meaning that you think is there.  It’s not there for me.  I can’t hear your voice or any of the other things I listen or watch for that tell me what you really mean.
• Text Messaging – The worst.  I will misunderstand you, you will misunderstand me. Text messaging is only good for me for task reminders or simple communications like that.

With one exception, every big blow-up argument I’ve had with anyone has been caused by misunderstandings in text based communications.  All the friends I no longer have.

So, bottom line, if you’re looking for a contact form, there isn’t one currently. If you really want to get in touch with me, you can figure out how.  There are multiple paths available and if you want to actually talk about something, we’ll figure out how to actually talk.  I want to understand you.