Ancient Web: David Danzig Declared His 1994 Homepage a Federal Department

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

Some people introduce their homepages with a curriculum vitae. David Danzig created an entire imaginary government department and put his name on the seal.

Enter the United States Department of David Danzig.

The homepage says it was created in 1994 and celebrates an eleventh year online, a claim consistent with its visibly older text but not independently verified as an exact launch date. The footer was last modified on June 2, 2006. Rather than a formal portfolio, it offers a collection of personal essays and jokes under the title Story of the Month (Or So).

The featured story, Mr. Jones, the School Teacher Mad With Power, satirizes an authority figure. The older story index ranges from a parody advertisement and a sarcastic letter to a bus company to surreal dreams, magnetic poetry and an essay from Danzig's college days.

A little country of one person

The homepage also promises a first-person project named Virtual New York, where visitors could stroll through the city. Another link points toward a daily journal called The Official Record. They are named features of the historical site; several destination pages did not load reliably through the research reader, so their actual present-day functionality is unverified.

Under a biographical heading, Danzig describes having recently graduated from Duke University law school and moved to Midtown Manhattan. He remembers the shared house at 708 Parker Street in Durham and lists former housemates by name. The page is a record of a particular stage of adult life, left written in the present tense even as its dates grow older.

A manually maintained hotlist, an email invitation, a page-search form, and a graphic for a Duke web award complete the setting. The links to universities and community organizations belong to that earlier personal identity rather than to a contemporary résumé.

The title's faux officialdom is not a claim that this was a federal agency. It is an enthusiastic private Web author taking the liberty to invent a name and a visual frame for his own writing.

The page's appeal is not technical sophistication. It is the sense that every link opens another room in the author's apartment, and that no editor had to approve the layout first.

Browse the original homepage and one surviving satirical story.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.