Eric Tilton writes (and permits me to reprint):

Seeing the PinealWeb logo on your blog was a strange experience. I’ve been a longtime reader of your (excellent) page, and I really enjoy the wide ranging list of thought-provoking links you provide. So, when I saw PinealWeb sitting there, I at first didn’t register it — I’ve grown so used to seeing the image at the bottom of my own page, I just filtered it out. You see, I created the image.

PinealWeb grew from a few colliding memes. Too much Illuminatus, for one thing. The foiled idealism of an early attempt at an HTML style guide (“can’t we all just write browser independent HTML?”), for another. It was hard to resist a little culture pranking when earnest and lazy web “designers” were busy optimizing for Netscape or IE and leaving those of us with weirder machines in the cold (Mosaic on BSD Mach in 1997 was a trip, let me tell you. Internet Explorer on a Mac in 2001 isn’t too much better).

I’m curious how you came across the image. I know it’s scattered here and there on people’s personal pages. I used to be a member of the Flat Earth Society mailing list, which was certainly one vector; I also still seem to get hits on an early, sketchy HTMLification of the Principia Discordia, which is doubtless another.