<nettime> Re: An Early History of 90s Cyberculture

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

There is a lot I agree with here, but there is also the broad way that the
Net is following, say, early (1925-44) television in terms of corporate
foreclosure; tv was hampered to a greater degree by channel allotment -
miniscule compared to domain names. One might also look at the early his-
tory of the novel; in media there's very often an early flash-point of
self-reflexivity / conceptualism, followed by distributive (corporate,
etc.) swamping.

With the Net, it's worth looking at the term 'html mills' on one hand, and
at the co-opting of revolution on the other - now mp3 seems vaguely in a
public vanguard, as far as the residue left is concerned - even though mp3
is always already about product.

On the third hand I'm ultimately optimistic as k12 and various communities
find themselves with burgeoning empowerment; I'm thinking of initiatives
to get just about everyone online - and I'd give this another three dec-
ades at least. This is a literal third way (thinking also of the Third
Path book, informal economies, etc.) - neither corporate nor old Net com-
munity, but the potential of slowly emerging social organizations, etc.
etc. I've seen this stuff in action and it's very encouraging.

Finally, I'm one of those 50 year olds but couldn't care less about the
so-called old days - I do care about ageism which is rampant on the Net,
rampant in the mills, and a fight no one really seems to care about. 

Alan

Internet Text at http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt 
Partial at http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html
Trace Projects at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm


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