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The Origins of Social Media

Judy Malloy

in Social Media Archeology and Poetics

In the formative years of the Internet, researchers collaboratively connected computing systems with a goal of sharing research and computing resources. The model process with which they created the ... More

In the formative years of the Internet, researchers collaboratively connected computing systems with a goal of sharing research and computing resources. The model process with which they created the Internet and its forefather, the ARPANET, was echoed in early social media platforms, where creative computer scientists, artists, writers, musicians educators explored the promise of computer-based platforms to bring together communities of interest in what would be called “cyberspace.” With a focus on the arts and humanities, this introduction traces the development of social media affordances in applications such as email, mailing lists, BBSs, the Community Memory, PLATO, Usenet, mail art, telematic art, and video communication. The author outlines the early social media platforms documented in each chapter in this book and summarizes how the book's epilogues both explore differences between early and contemporary social media and look to the future of the arts in social media.Less

Epilogue: Slow Machines and Utopian Dreams

Judith Donath

in Social Media Archeology and Poetics

The early days of social media saw tremendous optimism about the transformations that connecting people via networked computers would bring. This chapter, the book’s epilogue, analyses the nostalgia ... More

The early days of social media saw tremendous optimism about the transformations that connecting people via networked computers would bring. This chapter, the book’s epilogue, analyses the nostalgia that permeates the preceding chapters, in which the pioneers of the field write with nostalgia for creative freedom, the pre-commercial internet and the hopeful time when people believed that computing would change humanity for the better. The world of dial-up modems and floppy disks and ASCII bulletin board systems seems very long ago. But the ideals of that time, in spite of their naiveté, indeed because of it, are very valuable. Untainted by cynicism or corrupted by practicalities, they remind us of what the social net ought to be; they remind of the direction to head in, even if we will not quite get there. By inculcating ideals into mythic origin stories, nostalgia weaves them into a culture: we create the past that we want to live up to.Less

Expanding on “What Is the Social in Social Media?”: A Conversation with Geert Lovink

Judy Malloy

in Social Media Archeology and Poetics

In 1995, Geert Lovink started <nettime> with Pit Schultz. It expanded into many lists and languages and in the process demonstrated that English language and American-centric platforms do not have to ... More

In 1995, Geert Lovink started <nettime> with Pit Schultz. It expanded into many lists and languages and in the process demonstrated that English language and American-centric platforms do not have to be the lingua franca of the Internet. Lovink's contemporary work with the Institute of Network Cultures and its research networks, such as Unlike Us, has shaped a coalition that explores network architectures, the role of collective production, aesthetic tactics, and diverse, open information exchange. This introduction to the Epilogues focuses on his 2012 essay in e-flux -- “What Is the Social in Social Media?” -- asking three questions: Can you expand on what roles you envision for artists and writers in contemporary social media? How can we teach students to create in a difficult medium that so beautifully (and relentlessly) combines text, image, design, interactivity and collaboration? And how do you envision a social media of the future?Less

Action: Can We Stop Terminal Consumption?

Peter J. Taylor, Geoff O’Brien, and Phil O’Keefe

in Cities Demanding the Earth: A New Understanding of the Climate Emergency

This chapter asks the question, what does this unthinking mean for current anthropogenic climate change policies? This is answered in two ways. First, the concept of urban demand is discussed in its ... More

This chapter asks the question, what does this unthinking mean for current anthropogenic climate change policies? This is answered in two ways. First, the concept of urban demand is discussed in its current manifestation as the product of a global Advertising-Big Data-Social Media complex. Second, the mechanisms behind the immensity of Chinese urban growth in recent decades are described. In their different, but intertwined, ways these two expressions of today’s modernity are pointing irrevocably towards terminal consumption. The only means to stop this happening appears to a reinvention of the city, creating an urban demand for stewarding nature for future generations, a posterity cityLess

Crossing-Over of Art History and Media History in the Times of the Early Internet—with Special Regard to THE THING NYC

Susanne Gerber

in Social Media Archeology and Poetics

In the early Internet, art history crossed the path of media history and both disciplines conveyed characteristics of each other. Net (based) art did not regain the utopian potential of art, but its ... More

In the early Internet, art history crossed the path of media history and both disciplines conveyed characteristics of each other. Net (based) art did not regain the utopian potential of art, but its social, aesthetic and conceptual approach referenced the future role of digital communication. This chapter documents and examines the role of the art network THE THING in early digital communication and art practice and how it anticipated the future potential to communicate, distribute, and produce. Including the theory and practice that informed the founding of THE THING, as well as an interview with THE THING founder, Wolfgang Staehle, and a concluding timeline of THE THING's history, this chapter also emphasizes how THE THING was both playful and far ahead of its time.Less

Twitter and Electoral Bias

Wulf Loh, Anne Suphan, and Christopher Zirnig

in Big Data and Democracy

In this chapter, the authors introduce functional criteria along Habermasian lines for the role of public spheres in a healthy democracy and apply research from the use of Twitter during the last ... More

In this chapter, the authors introduce functional criteria along Habermasian lines for the role of public spheres in a healthy democracy and apply research from the use of Twitter during the last German general election to describe the influence (or lack thereof) of social media on the electoral process. In particular, the authors discuss the workings of various digital divides and highlight their impact on online participation in these elections.Less

Community Memory: The First Public-Access Social Media System

Lee Felsenstein

in Social Media Archeology and Poetics

Community Memory was the first public-access social media system, opening without advance notice on August 8, 1973 in Berkeley, California. Designed and programmed by members of a nonprofit company ... More

Community Memory was the first public-access social media system, opening without advance notice on August 8, 1973 in Berkeley, California. Designed and programmed by members of a nonprofit company established to bring the power of computers to the counterculture, it ran on a mainframe computer and was well received by those who tried it. This chapter discusses the history of the project, contributions of some of its members, and ways in which it succeeded and ultimately failed to sustain itself. Pre-dating the personal computer, it was designed to provide terminals that nucleated neighborhood information-exchange points. Community Memory spun out from its parent organization, Resource One, Inc. to form its own nonprofit -- The Community Memory Project -- in 1977. The design underwent three generations, culminating in a network of text-based browsers running on basic IBM PCs accessing a Unix server. It was never connected to the Internet, and closed in 1992.Less

MOOs and Participatory Media

Dene Grigar

in Social Media Archeology and Poetics

This essay revisits the online defense that took place in LinguaMOO in July 1995, tying it to theories and current practice of social media. In doing so, it situates MOOs in a historical, cultural ... More

This essay revisits the online defense that took place in LinguaMOO in July 1995, tying it to theories and current practice of social media. In doing so, it situates MOOs in a historical, cultural context as an early form of participatory media related to social media environments prevalent today and establishes that popular social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, are not new but, rather, are part of an evolution of technologies that foster the human impetus to connect with one another across any mode of communication.Less

Rescension and Precedential Media

Steve Dietz

in Social Media Archeology and Poetics

This paper discusses five exhibitions curated by the author of what might be most broadly termed network-based art: Beyond Interface: net art and art on the net (1998), Art Entertainment Network ... More

This paper discusses five exhibitions curated by the author of what might be most broadly termed network-based art: Beyond Interface: net art and art on the net (1998), Art Entertainment Network (2000), Telematic Connections: The Virtual Embrace (2001), Open_Source_Art_Hack (2002), and Translocations (2003). While they took place after the invention of the http protocol, they represent an inflection point prior to the commodification of the technology of social media culture and explore formative practices by artists and institutions for current recensions of social media.Less

System X: Interview with Founding Sysop Scot McPhee

Amanda McDonald Crowley

in Social Media Archeology and Poetics

System X was an Australian-based dial up BBS, where users created a community of interest with both a variety of text-based conversations and a virtual gallery of images and sound that invited visual ... More

System X was an Australian-based dial up BBS, where users created a community of interest with both a variety of text-based conversations and a virtual gallery of images and sound that invited visual and sound artists and musicians to share work and collaborate. System X also sought to originate critical thought about information storage and control, data networks, and art practice in this media. Importantly, it provided a context for community members to upload their own content and to share that content not only with a Sydney-based community, but also with the growing international community. In an interview with Founding Sysop Scot McPhee, this chapter documents the roots of System X in the Sydney electronic music community; System X's role as an art project; the importance of uploading, downloading, manipulating and re-uploading music and images; the user community; the audience; and System X's legacy in the Australian digital arts community.Less

Pseudo Space: Experiments with Avatarism and Telematic Performance in Social Media

Antoinette LaFarge

in Social Media Archeology and Poetics

The history of social media has been marked by arguments over two central issues: markers of identity and degrees of participation. The battle over identity has largely focused on the legitimacy of ... More

The history of social media has been marked by arguments over two central issues: markers of identity and degrees of participation. The battle over identity has largely focused on the legitimacy of experimenting with personal and social identity through pseudonymous ‘avatars’. The argument over agency has centered on whether participants should be tightly corralled or given full programming power to change the structures of social media itself. These issues are linked through widespread distrust of pseudonymous agency and the suspicion -- fueled by recent controversies over ‘trolling’ -- that people will tend to participate disruptively, and that such disruptions are necessarily problematic. In this chapter, the author argues for a different view, suggesting that artists have led the way in demonstrating the creative potential of pseudonymous agency in social media. Among the fruits of deep participation in social media are new ways of telling stories, understanding identity itself, and engaging with improvisation as a central rather than peripheral creative activity.Less

The Personal Computer and Social Media

Paul E. Ceruzzi

in Social Media Archeology and Poetics

The use of digital computers to facilitate social interaction has not eclipsed the uses for which they were invented, but it often seems that way. That use requires an ability to network computers to ... More

The use of digital computers to facilitate social interaction has not eclipsed the uses for which they were invented, but it often seems that way. That use requires an ability to network computers to one another, a capability that took several decades after the computer's invention to be realized. The Internet, which emerged out of military-sponsored research done in the 1970s, enabled the creation of sophisticated forms of social interaction. But the personal computer phenomenon was evolving in a parallel universe, with little communication between the two camps. This chapter argues that important first steps toward social media were taken in the arena of the personal computer, which also emerged in the 1970s, but from a different direction. Using devices to connect PCs to the telephone network, and developing so-called “bulletin board” software, personal computer enthusiasts created a framework on which the current Internet-based social world resides.Less

Social Media and the Collapse of American Public Life

Yevgeny Simkin

in On Inequality and Freedom

This chapter explores social media’s role in post-truth and reductions in freedom.

Experiments in Cyber-Liminality

Michael F. Leruth

in Fred Forest's Utopia: Media Art and Activism

Chapter 3 considers Forest’s internet-based art from the mid-1990s through the present, with particular emphasis on ritualistic and festive manifestations of public liminality that take place online ... More

Chapter 3 considers Forest’s internet-based art from the mid-1990s through the present, with particular emphasis on ritualistic and festive manifestations of public liminality that take place online or make the internet an integral part of the event, and on more whimsical exercises in parody and the détournement of interfaces reminiscent of his early experiments with print and broadcast media. Works discussed in Chapter 3 includeFrom Casablanca to Locarno: Love Updated by the Internet and Electronic Media (1995),Time-Out (1998), The Techno-Wedding (1999), The Center of the World (1999), Territorial Outings (2001), Meat: The Territory of the Body and the Networked Body (2002), Memory Pictures (2005), The Experimental Research Center of the Territory (2008), The Traders’ Ball (2010), Ego Cyberstar and the Problem of Identity (2010), Ebb and Flow: The Internet Cave (2011), and Sociological Walk with Google Glass (2014). Chapter 3 also explains Forest’s unique position in the acrimonious “Quarrel of Contemporary Art” (Querelle de l’art contemporain) that raged among French intellectuals and in the media in the 1990s and early 2000s and highlights his contributions to France’s annual Internet Festival, which he helped create.Less

The Shadow or the Self: The Construction of Neil Gaiman on Social Media

Lanette Cadle

in The Artistry of Neil Gaiman: Finding Light in the Shadows

This chapter examines Gaiman's intensive use of social media to create a shadow self that gives fans the access they crave to his inner processes and daily life. This means making selections, much ... More

This chapter examines Gaiman's intensive use of social media to create a shadow self that gives fans the access they crave to his inner processes and daily life. This means making selections, much like a curator faced with a massive archive must select pieces that form a cohesive exhibit, a process that is much more nuanced than the commercial call to create a "brand," an idea that is commonly touted within the world of business. Instead, it is a conscious construction of a shadow self, an embodiment that both is and is not the real Neil Gaiman.Less

Art and Minitel in France in the 1980s

Annick Bureaud

in Social Media Archeology and Poetics

The Minitel (French videotex system) is often considered as a “pre-Internet” platform and the art that was created with it as belonging to “network art” and/or “collaborative” practices on a “social ... More

The Minitel (French videotex system) is often considered as a “pre-Internet” platform and the art that was created with it as belonging to “network art” and/or “collaborative” practices on a “social media” avant la lettre. In which respect is this true? This article provides an initial map and a typology of minitel-based creative practice by identifying works and documenting its context as it happened in France, compared to other countries. With detailed descriptions of selected works and of the ART ACCES online magazine-gallery project, it proposes an analysis that will be compared to and confront net art, new media art, and current trends in e-publishing.Less