As part of my role in supporting faculty, I’ve been thinking about new ways to leverage online technology to build connectivity. To better envision the future, I started to wonder what the past web looked like. Knowing how we’ve changed over time will help clarify trends in Internet use. So, I turned to the Wayback Machine.
This archive takes snapshots of websites over several points in time. When I pointed the search to the Department of Medicine’s home page, it turned up several iterations. I’ve gathered two of them here. They are from 2001 and 2005:
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One trend I noticed is the increased attention to readability. Both are still text heavy, but the later page adds more white space and bullets. The next step will be to add images. Ultimately, the future will hold more interactivity. Rather than a passive page of information, websites will engage and link the viewer with other users.