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# New Aesthetic Watch: Google BBS
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/new-aesthetic-watch-google-bbs/
- Published: 2012-04-19T17:39:32.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:36:43.000Z
- Description: LOS ANGELES — Look out, world, the New Aesthetic is coming. Or is it? We here at Hyperallergic thought we might start collecting more evidence of the tide of new aesthetics sweeping our tweeting-clicking-instagramming.
- Author: AX Mina
- Tags: Opinion, Google, The New Aesthetic, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:51 (2012, 2013, part 1)

![A screenshot of mass:werk's Google BBS.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2012/04/googlebbs-e1334778366829.png)

A screenshot of mass:werk's Google BBS.

LOS ANGELES — Look out, world, the New Aesthetic is coming. Or is it? We here at Hyperallergic thought we might start collecting more evidence of the tide of new aesthetics sweeping our tweeting-clicking-instagramming. We realize that there’s already a [tumblelog](http://new-aesthetic.tumblr.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com) doing this, but we wanted to continue the dialogue from [my original post](../50081/is-the-new-aesthetic-a-thing-searching-for-signs-in-tupac-and-google/) exploring the topic.

This edition looks at a [BBS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin%5Fboard%5Fsystem?ref=hyperallergic.com) version of Google, a project by the Austrian [mass:werk media environments](http://www.masswerk.at/?ref=hyperallergic.com). It’s a real, functioning service, with a mock login process that recalls the days when you had to connect to the internet using your phone line. The results are actual Google results, with links to the original pages for your plain ol’ 21st century browser.

This will be a trip for those of us old enough to remember the days of BBS, Telnet and [a text-based *Oregon Trail*](http://www.thehouseofgames.net/index.php?t=10&id=380&ref=hyperallergic.com). But I bet newer netizens will love this little piece of nostalgia and a chance to relive the days of yore (never mind that Google came around after BBS’s fell out of favor).

Is it New Aesthetic? There was a time when this is how we saw through digital devices and the divide between human and computer perception was more clear. Humans saw images, smiles, colors. Computers were 8-bit color and monochromatic fonts, and it’s that vision of the computer world that we see in a film like *The Matrix*, where humans live in a green-tinted wonderland built by machines.

(h/t [Engadget](http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/14/bbs-version-of-google/?ref=hyperallergic.com))