San Francisco web culture grew directly out of rave culture

Evidence

In 1993, the first popular web browser, Mosaic, was released. San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood emerged as a center of the new, exciting internet boom. Cyber-utopian culture was widely embraced by the software developers who flocked to San Francisco in the midto late 1990s to establish dot-com companies. For geeks, rave culture epitomized open-source community, since it was collectively or ganized by members and emphasized a better way that was solidly outside the mainstream. In 1992, UC Berkeley freshman Brian Behlendorf started an e-mail list called sfraves that made the connection to the nascent internet culture. Behlendorf was one of the first developers of the Apache open-source server software, and he went on to co-found the Apache Software Foundation and serve on the Mozilla board of directors. Sfraves quickly grew to more than five hundred members, who began to hang out together. They were dubbed “netravers”—people enthusiastic about both raves and the newly invented internet. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 129

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Fred Turner’s work (From Counterculture to Cyberculture) on New Communalism feeding Silicon Valley ideology — likely a later reference in this same book. — connects to: San Francisco technoculture before the dot-com boom fused cyberutopianism with rave and drug culture. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 124; In-person gatherings create the scenes that sustain online subcultures — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 154; Early internet culture was born from countercultural ethos, not commerce — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 161 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Early internet culture was born from countercultural ethos, not commerce #corroborates (0.78) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 161
• In-person gatherings create the scenes that sustain online subcultures #expands (0.75) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 154
• Early internet culture descended directly from 1960s counterculture via Stewart Brand #corroborates (0.75)
• Silicon Valley hacker culture originated in 1970s Bay Area hobbyist clubs #expands (0.72) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 68