Greene's essay tells the story of digital art. The term started as a "glitch" in 1995, but has taken on so much new meaning in the years since.
One thing that surprised me about the history of digital art is that it immediately had an audience when it first emerged in the 1990s. I thought people were more skeptical about this idea at the time, probably because many people today are skeptical of digital art, despite it being mainstream for many years. One thing I kept thinking about when reading this piece was NFTs. Many people dislike NFTs simply because they're confusing; after researching them, even I still can't fully understand what gives them so much value. Maybe people were more accepting of digital art back when it first emerged because it was embraced by a smaller community, rather than the mainstream public. In the essay, Greene discusses the early online art message boards as "simultaneously content and community." I love this quote because it shows how art can bring people together, even in online spaces.
At the end of the essay, Greene states that digital art "may now seem threatened by its own success" ... "but the internet's prodigious capacity for hosting and inspiring politicized, "hacktivist" artwork shouldn't be underestimated." This piece was published more than two decades ago, but even then, Greene understood the power and popularity digital art would gain. Although its easy to be skeptical of digital art today because of things like NFTs, the internet is still a major tool for artists who want to spread their work online.
