Early Web and the Affordances of the Browser

• M. D. Coverley
• Endless Suburbs
• 1999

Endless Suburbs is a hypertext narrative that pokes fun at the myth of the suburban American Dream: owning a nice car, finding true love, owning a home, and building a successful career. The browser's status bar is leveraged to display a metanarrative that comments cynically on the story unfolding on the screen. Java Applets use a page-turning application as a duplicating machine to replicate endless copies of suburbia—houses, cars. But as readers delve deeper into the story, the tale goes awry: "Everybody is working full-time to support twelve cars and 10,000 square feet of living space. No one can drive anywhere because of traffic."