Philosophy and Social Media 2: The Origins of Social Media

PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL MEDIA

The origins of social media

Look at Me (2001) by Jennifer Egan

Ordinary People - a fictitious dot-com that

aspires to record and webcast every detail

of Charlotte’s daily life

‘It’s not a magazine – it’s a database …

[containing] people’s stories, just ordinary

Americans … Each one of these folks will

have their own home page – we call it a

Personal Space™ - devoted exclusively to

their lives, internal and external’.

The origins of social media

The origins of social mediaProsumers emerged with ‘Web 2’: the internet as collaborative platform

• ‘Web 2’ popularised by Tim O’Reilly in 2004. ‘Web 2 is a set of principles and

practices that tie together a veritable solar system of sites that demonstrate

some or all of these principles’.

Meme: an idea, behaviour or style

that spreads from person to

person within a culture.

• Web 2: a cultural evolution

• Q: Where did the culture of

online sharing and

collaboration come from?

The origins of social mediaThe values and practices of hacker culture and the 60s counterculture.

Counterculture nomads

The Prisoner (1967-68)

‘I am not a number - I am a free man!’


Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995)

• Nomadism: resistance to stasis, capture, definition. Life as experiment; refusal of categories

• Jack Kerouac as patron Saint of 60s nomadism. But we can be nomads without moving

• Nomadism frees up creative energies, opens creative spaces

• ‘Majoritarian’ culture seeks to capture these energies and insert them into productive systems


Drop City Colorado (1965 – 1977) – the first hippie commune

• Two key values of the counterculture, crystallized in Drop City:

1. Nomadism

2. Communalism

Counterculture to cyberculture

Stewart Brand (1938-)

Whole Earth Catalogue (‘68-’72): tools for nomads.

‘We are as gods and might as well get used to it. … [A]

realm of intimate personal power is developing – power

of the individual to conduct his own education, find his

own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share

his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid

this process are sought and promoted by the WHOLE

EARTH CATALOGUE’

Counterculture to cyberculture

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism, by Fred Turner (2006)

• Brand organized the first ever Hacker’s Conference, in San Francisco, to coincide with Steven Levy’s book, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (1984)

• In 1985, Brand, along with Larry Brilliant, and Cliff Figaro and John Coate (former members of the Farm commune) started the WELL (World Earth ‘Lectronic Link) – the world’s first online social network http://www.well.com/

http://www.well.com/

Origins of the internet

J.C.R. Licklider (1915 -1990), Head of Computer

Research Program at DARPA (Defence Department

Advanced Research Projects Agency)

• 1962: Licklider plans ‘packet switching’ network

1968: ARPAnet project gets off the ground


Douglas Engelbart (1925-)

Stanford Research Institute (SRI)

• Inspired by Vannevar Bush’s article,

‘As We May Think’ (1945)

• Engelbart dreamed of a

personalised computing experience

that would augment the powers of

the human intellect

The Memex (from Memory Extension): a microfilm-based ‘device in which an individual stores all his

books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with

exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfilm


‘The Mother of all Demos’, 1968

• Engelbart was an outlier. His

ideas were largely ignored by

the computer scientists at ARPA

• Video director: Stewart Brand

Hardware hackers

Tech Model Railroad Club (MIT)

Hack (MIT definition): ‘A prank or practical

joke, which is both challenging for the

perpetrators and amusing to the MIT

community’.

‘Access to computers – and anything that

might teach you something about the way the

world works – should be unlimited and total’.

‘Information wants to be free’.

Hardware hackers

Community Memory Project (1972-1974) –

first computerised bulletin board system

• People’s Computer Company (early 1970s)

• Inspired a generation of hardware hackers

who developed the first personal computers

Hardware hackers

Homebrew Computer Club (1975-1986)

• An informal group of electronic

enthusiasts and hobbyists who traded

parts, circuits, and information on the

DIY construction of computing devices

• One of the most influential forces in the

formation of the culture of Silicon Valley

Hardware hackers

Hardware hackers

Steve Wozniak (‘Woz’) (1955-)

Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

• Apple I (1976)

Apple Mac: nomadism branded and sold

Bulletin boards and the WELL

Free and open source software (FOSS)

• Richard Stallman (1953-): founder of Free Software Movement

• Founder of the GNU Project (founded 1983).

Mission: to build a free UNIX-compatible operating system.

• The GNU Project was intended to bring

back the cooperative spirit that prevailed

in the early computing community

• Digital commons: repository of free code

• ‘Free as in speech, not free as in beer’


‘I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big

and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has

been brewing since April, and is starting to get ready. I'd like

any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS

resembles it somewhat…’ (Torvalds, December 1991)

Linus Torvalds (1969-)


• Two key values of the counter hacker culture:

1. Nomadism: free experimentation and creation

2. Communalism: the digital commons

The marketing of ‘open source’

‘Homesteading on the Noosphere’ (1997): Eric S. Raymond argues that the free

software movement is based in a gift culture ‘in which participants compete for

prestige by giving time, energy, and creativity away’.

The marketing of ‘open source’

In 1998, Netscape made the strategic decision to embrace open source culture. It

released the source code of Netscape Communicator 4.0 onto the internet and

created the Mozilla Foundation to steer the future development of the product

Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale hired Raymond to

head up the marketing campaign

The evolution of hacker culture

Mark Zuckerberg (1984-)

‘[W]e want to build a hacker culture. We want

to be the place where the best hackers want

to work, because our culture is set up so

they can build stuff quickly and do crazy stuff

and be recognized for standout brilliance’.

Facebook is not an open source project

• Facebook treats hacker culture as a

social norm: it is an free-access platform

for transparent sharing and co-creation


• We assume that the present stands at the end of a linear development

• A teleological view of history: the present is to the past as a tree is to a seed

• History is rhizomatic – forces grow underground and burst up unexpectedly

Philosophy and Social Media 2: The Origins of Social Media

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