Early web community pioneers worked deliberately to shape technology toward human connection
Evidence
Steuer made a conscious decision to use the entrepreneurial culture of dot-com-era San Francisco to accomplish his goal of spreading the gospel of “networked, local community.” Steuer and Cool envisioned a multi-sited community: an online bulletin board, a hosting platform for personal publishing, and a cyber café that would teach classes and serve as a meeting place for like-minded web devotees. To this end, they wrote up a business plan, incorporated as Cyborganic Corporation, and sought funding. … Jenny Cool wrote the first Cyborganic manifesto in 1995, which concluded, “We must use [new technologies] to serve our own ends, not as ends in themselves, and we must work together to build a future we want, in our imaginations and in our lives.” The founders of Cyb-organic recognized that although internet technologies had immense potential, they were not intrinsically positive. Instead, improving community and connection required hard work. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 132
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the ‘Grafting & Growth’ article theme of deliberate cultivation of technology/infrastructure for human ends — the Cyborganic founders treating the web like an underused resource needing active shaping. — connects to: Online participatory culture predates the dot-com boom by years — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 80; Early Web 2.0 social ties formed through blogs and meetups before mass social media — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 156; Internet platforms gained unprecedented power to manufacture user behavior — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 941 (+4 more)
- DEFINE: Grounds the idea that ‘Web 2.0’ values (community, participation) had explicit earlier articulation in the 1990s dot-com scene rather than emerging spontaneously.
Broader Connections
- Early Web 2.0 social ties formed through blogs and meetups before mass social media
#expands(0.90) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 156 - Early internet success no longer required techno-utopian ideals or DIY ethos
#contradicts(0.85) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 173 - Internet platforms gained unprecedented power to manufacture user behavior
#corroborates(0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 941