A screenshot of Stephen King on the Net appeared this week on the One Terabyte Of Kilobyte Age Tumblr blog. The page was last updated on the 14th of October 2000. The screenshot didn’t go unnoticed: 52 users reblogged and liked it. I tagged it as “my,” ”fan,” and “clipart,” looked through the news and links section, read the promise of the author to update soon again—my everyday routine. But this time there is a history to this case that makes it special.

Half a year ago in Tel Aviv, after my talk about immersion and the early WWW, the generous Dr. Lior Zalmanson gave me a tour of the town. After a short talk he mentioned that when he was a teenager, he had his page on the GeoCities too. It’s not a rare thing to hear from people I encounter, but it’s usually the case that they don’t really remember what and where exactly it was. Lior on the contrary was quite precise in his memories. Not only that, he could remember details that made it obvious that this website was a big deal and a big part of his life. So I’ve asked Lior for an interview that ended up taking place on the 28th of October 2016 in New York.

Olia Lialina: How old were you when you started to make the page?

Lior Zalmanson: I got thirteen in December 1996, and the page was created in the beginning of 1997.

OL: Amazing!

Honestly, I didn’t have to ask, I remember you referring to it in Tel-Aviv, and it was in that moment that I’ve decided I should really talk to you. There is this arrogant phrase that I found in 2008 on a generator that made fun of the early web pages. It’s banner shouted: “Make Any Webpage Look Like It Was Made By A 13 Year-Old In 1996!” It was repeated many times in articles and blog posts, and became sort of a stamp of sarcasm they put on GeoCities pages. Now to the real question:

Were there other 13-year-olds around you who were making webpages at that time?

LZ: I think I was relatively early. I remember vaguely there were a few other computer geeks in class that have been experimenting with HTML or building pages. But I don’t remember anyone of them to have any content other than a page with their picture, their first name, saying what are their hobbies, “my favorite links.” I think I was the only one that I knew of in my class that has really done a webpage for something.

OL: Did your classmates know about your page?

LZ: I don’t think so. Maybe my best friends. The web was another universe, my page was made for people out there.

OL: You proudly state that you had a purpose. And the purpose was…

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