Is the Whole Earth Electronic Link a Good Idea?

4min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

The whole earth link was more of an exception than a rule, in part because it was so distinctly commercial. It offered conferencing forums where people post a discussion topic and other people join in. The will is organized in a clever way where there are conferences that are on specific topics. And then those have their own moderators who help kind of keep things going. Because of that hands on moderation, it cultivated a really special community. Many of those people were drawn from the local media industries. They could reasonably look like a business to ask for a bank loan or something similar. But at the same time, historically, if we're trying to sit alongside these other systems, it looks really different

Paris Marx is joined by Kevin Driscoll to discuss the networks and services built by volunteers and hobbyists on top of the telephone network before the internet took over the in the 1990s, and what it can teach us about the internet and social media today.

Kevin Driscoll is the author of The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media and an associate professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. Follow Kevin on Twitter at @kevindriscoll.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode: