Alongside simply preserving early digital work (including reprogramming segments done in the now-defunct Flash), The NEXT stresses accessibility and programming durability.
In this first phase they have republished three early web pieces, ca. 2000:
Fall of the Site of Marsha, three (deteriorating) states of some poor lady's sweet little homepage about angels, as she either gets hacked or descends into madness (look for plot clues in the links).
Friday's Big Meeting, the proprietary, in-house chat room of the most hopeful (and inept) small design firm in the world, as they bumble toward their do-or-die Friday meeting with their last client ... and due to some technical glitch all the behind-the-scenes staff banter is visible to the world!
El Dorado, the mostly-true record of a road trip through the midwest of one American writer and his three German writer guests -- guests infatuated with American pop culture and crime movies; the piece is a long, horizontal scroll -- a largeley forgotten web capability -- which represents the visitors' astonishment at the endless American plains.
Also included is a piece Wittig is particularly fond of:
Blue Company, a novel in email, in which a young marketing guy gets a terrible job transfer; he's sent to Italy, which is great, but he's sent to the early Renaissance, which is dangerous and uncomfortable; his emails -- illustrated with drawings because, of course, there was no photography back then -- arrive in the inbox of a young woman he met just before he left.
For scholars The NEXT also has a trove of print-outs of some of the earliest online creativity ever, the dial-up, one-computer bulletin board IN.S.OMNIA including a written "interdact" with author Harry Mathews, and oodles of planning documents of over 40 netprov projects, available upon request.
For more information about the Minor in Digital Writing, Literature, and Design, or about the Major in Writing Studies, in which Wittig taught, visit https://cahss.d.umn.edu/elws