í Assignments

Turner states that “Wired magazine’s vision of the digital horizon emerged in part from its affiliations,” but as Turner more succinctly points out, the magazine’s founder and editor-in-chief Louis Rossetto himself boasted that Wired is not a magazine about technology, rather it is a magazine about people who are “the merger of computers, telecommunications and the media… transforming life at the cusp of the new millennium.” The magazine, much like the New Communalist movement, is the networking of information. In the case of Wired, the information is people. Wired’s “vision of the digital horizon” is nothing more than the people who, like Kevin Kelly, Esther Dyson, Stewart Brand, John Perry Barlow, and George Gilder, promote the evolution of digital networking and its uses through the growing use of computers as “entrepreneurial information workers.” These individuals, who claim themselves to be the technical elite in the pages of Wired that they write for and about themselves, legitimize their professional networks by endorsing one another’s ideas for improving the digital generation. It was customary of Wired to dismiss the idea of balanced reporting as it regularly published articles about its own staff writers and featured companies, like the Global Business Network, one of the magazine’s main investors.

An aspect of the New Communalist ideals that the promoters of the “New Economy” embraced was the turning away from politics. While the New Communalists of the 1960’s were non-political, in the 1990’s many of the technological elite identified not as non-political but rather as libertarian. What we learned from the 1995 interview between Esther Dyson and Newt Gingrich, is that the New Right embraced new technologies and the internet but purposely manipulated the contact language created with the techno-libertarians to misappropriate the New Communalist inspired non-hierarchical, non-government views and manipulate new internet laws to garner themselves (members of the New Right) more power through commercial growth, specifically through the telecommunications companies. In fact, these Republicans, through the creation of the “Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age”, claimed that little “necessary” hierarchies, and ultimately corporate deregulation were agreed upon ideas collaborated with representatives of the New Communalists, computer technologists and government representatives and that New Right politics were a countercultural revolution, to stop it would be to stop progress of technology and growth of America. Ultimately, the use of the networked professionals was manipulated and, to use the metaphor of people as computers, it can be said that the techno-liberals of Wired were hacked by the New Right.

Turner argues that a “close look at Wired’s first and most influential five years suggests that the magazine’s vision of the digital horizon emerged from affiliations with Kevin Kelly and the Whole Earth Network, and through them the New Communalist embrace the politics of consciousness.” I think what this means is that due to Kelly’s contributions to the Whole Earth Catalog, along with the connections he made during his time there, Kelly brought a lot of his beliefs (and therefore the beliefs of those at Whole Earth Network) to Wired. New Communalists believed in turning to consciousness as a means for social change. For them, it was not about tearing down bureaucracy but instead they believed in a stable social order. However, after the 1994 elections, there was a shift in how government regulations were viewed. Now there was a call for deregulation, especially in the telecommunications sector. Dyson and Gingrich argued that “America was about to enter a new era, one in which technology would do away with the need for bureaucratic oversight of both market and politics.”
In their 1995 interview Dyson and Gingrich both compared the digital revolution to the birth of the American nation. In my opinion, the only difference between Dyson/Ginghrich and Wired’s first five years is that Dyson and Gingrich became lobbyists for de-regulation and getting rid of a hierarchal system whereas this was not the primary goal of the New Communalist movement. However, the ideas of the new communalist and the Whole Earth Catalog paved the way for cyber culture. Each movement had a vision of the future, and as Turner states “The rhetoric reflected a series of earlier encounters between the Whole Earth community, the technological community, and the corporate community. By the time Dyson interviewed Gingrich, the notion of business as a source of social change, of digital technology as the tool and symbol of business, and of decentralization as a social ideal were well established in the pages of Wired and in its network contributors.” In other words, the 1995 interview was a result of everything that began in the Whole Earth Network.

The WELL was founded by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant in 1985 as a way to put the Whole Earth Catalog online. The WELL brought together countercultualrists and New Communalists from the Whole Earth Catalog model and offered them a space where they can interact with like-minded people. The groups that were on the WELL had cybernetic ideals and believed that shared information was very important. This shared information was a product that was supplied by the consumers who were part of the WELL. This information was what the WELL founders were selling to its consumers and the price of the subscription coupled with the writers of the content made this appealing to those who wanted to be a part of the  community New Communalists had dreamt of.

In my opinion, from reading this chapter, the WELL operates a self-governing system by engaging its members. Everyone can express themselves how they want in this community but it is up to the individual as to what they want to see. Everyone is their own moderator. If there was a comment from a person that you did not like all you had to was use the technology that WELL provided (Bozo filter) to erase the comment from their own screens, but not erasing it from the entire community.

This form of self-governing is exactly how the New Communalists had their community with a nonheirarchical structure while using technology. They did not have people overseeing each community within WELL that would decide what was right or wrong. Instead, they let each individual make that decision on their own. As with any new technology WELL would evolve by seeing how its members dealt with certain situations and using that as a better understanding of the social and technological interactions that its members dealt with allowing them to better use WELL.

Due by midnight Tuesday, December 8th (350-400 words).

Part 1. Turner (2006:208-9) argues that “a close look at Wired’s first and most influential five years suggests that the magazine’s vision of the digital horizon emerged in large part from its intellectual and interpersonal affiliations with Kevin Kelly and the Whole Earth network and, through them, from the New Communalist embrace of the politics of consciousness.” How does Turner connect these early affiliations with the interview in the August 1995 issue of Wired between Esther Dyson and Newt Gingrich?

Part 2. Point to a passage from chapter 6 and craft one or two questions that will help guide our discussion next week.

I think that a self-government system operates on the notion that they (community on the WELL) rule their own virtuality affairs and are free from control outside of the community.  The people who are connected to the Whole Earth Lectronic Link are free to discuss various topics without the threat of being governed by political forces that will tell them that things are supposed to be done a certain way.

I get the sense that people go to the community to be informed, and check for updates and new information just by dialing into to this system to share, comment and distribute the information.  I believe that Turner gives you an idea about how Brand created a forum for which a governing system was not allowed because of the restriction of new ideas, innovative ideologies and the austere forms of governing procedures.   Therefore, a self-governing system operates in the way of being free to distribute guidelines, course of action, and the information needed by the community.

When I think of self-governing, I think of how we govern ourselves as a community according to our own data, as well as responsibilities.  Self-governing is not relying or depending on government to fix our problems, but instead, is a sense of freedom and responsibility to solve one’s own problem.  The WELL presents a new version of the modern ideal citizen who looks to self-govern in a virtuality world.  For so long, we’ve been taught to listen to government and that we cannot govern ourselves, so this system acts as a mechanism to have the community do it themselves.

There’s a certain irony in Brand’s journey toward advocating for a self-governing system in light of his repudiation of self-sufficiency in 1975 as he broke from his earlier New Communalist orientation. He decried it as a “woodsy extension of the fatal American mania for privacy” (2006:132). In this way, he foreswore notions of self-governance, after a fashion, though he would go on to create a system of self-governance on WELL that emanated from the same ideological stripe as the Communalist mentality. The idea that a system could be intrinsically self-governing means that there have to be certain expectations about the personalities and capabilities of users. It wasn’t solely the structure of WELL that made it governable principally by its users, but there was an implicit social contract they consented to when they entered that online space. To whit, it was that everyone will abide by certain cultural norms to keep the community sustainable. What helped bring about these norms was not necessarily structural magic or even an intentional community making process so much as a certain  pre-existing cultural and ideological uniformity. Brand and the early WELL users were able to believe in an organic self governed system due to certain expectations about a predispostion toward self sufficiency in the user base. The idea that Turner seems to be hinting toward is the Brand and co. outsourced their beliefs about governance to the way WELL was designed, including its charter and its premium experiments.

This was another section that very much hit home for me as a longtime participant in online communities and having only recently founded a new one and become a community moderator. The community was originally founded under self governance ideals, but they quickly fell apart necessitating the drafting of a formal list of community standards and a move toward participatory governance. The idea of self governance is pervasive in online communities, largely because of a common libertarian strain that may hail from early communities like WELL, but is likely also connected to the semi-anonymity of the web. From my own anecdotal observations, it usually leads to site administrators giving themselves sweeping powers via hastily drafted terms of service and then executing them through authoritarian means.

It was interesting to see the influence of people like Don Norman and Kevin Kelly on the construction of this community since they’re regarded almost as folk heroes in tech circles these days. The picture of how this group of people informed the creation of modern web culture is almost crystal clear at this point. Turner has mentioned DARPA and PARC a few times so I’m waiting for Marc Weiser and Tim Berners Lee to eventually show up.

In chapter 5 “Virtuality and Community on the WELL” Turner argues that Stewart Brand “lay down boundary conditions for a self-governing system”.

In this chapter, Turner talks about WELL (Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link). It was one of the most influential computer network, founded by Stewart Brand in 1985. The WELL was a “teleconferencing system within which subscribers could dial up a central computer and type messages to one another in either asynchronous or real-time conversation”. So basically it is similar what we use now in our every day routine on the Internet. Stewart Brand was serving to place boundary conditions for a self-governing system, “he was working to establish a forum in which individuals could express themselves and form an alternative community of kindred souls”. He assumed a self-governing system, which worked by been comprehensive. He thought that it would be great if people could share and discuss any type of information with one another and communicate a soon as they wanted too. At the end users had control of almost everything.

The Whole Earth Catalog became a model for WELL. WELL was more comfortable than Whole Earth Catalog which was published only a few times a year. And access to the information was much more easier that from Whole Earth Catalog. Participants or members of WELL were journalist and hacking community. “WELL became the place to exchange the information and build the social network on which their employment depended”.

Later on users had to pay money to be able to participate. Stewart Brand was worried that if WELL cost nothing than the rap dominators would be able to take over, so he invested a subscription fee. “As a result, he decided to charge users eight dollar subscription fee and two dollars per hour to log in – far less than the twenty five dollars per hour of use that other systems were charging at the time. Subscription was a model of pay for free seeing information that really worked. At that rate people could forget they were WELL members and not be stricken when they noticed their bill six months later. Often it would revive their interest in getting their money’s worth”.

The Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link, also known as the WELL, was created by Larry Brillant and Stewart Brand as a way of continuing and expanding on the ideas of the Whole Earth Catalog. The WELL was to be “a teleconferencing system within which subscribers could dial up a central computer and type messages to one another in either asynchronous or real-time conversations” (141). This system was seen as way to bring the countercultural idea of shared consciousness online.

When it was created Brand did not want to post all the sections of his Whole Earth Catalog because he wanted subscribers to be able to make their own topics of conversation; they were free to write what they wanted. Members are able to create their own topics and create their own conversations as they pleased. The subscription rate was a lot lower than most of their competitors only because Brand wanted others to be able to share a relationship on the WELL. He wanted members to gain a true experience of communicating with others and sharing ideas rather than it being a quick rapid post.

The WELL team had comprised seven design goals of the system, the most important one being that it was self-governing. An example of them putting this goal into action was the features of erasing posts of another member from the screen that a user doesn’t like or being able to go back and delete a post of their own that they didn’t want available to the eyes of other members. They are able to create and manage the online community to what they want to see.

Based on the WELL, I think a self-governing system can be seen as one that gives its users the freedom to do what they want. Users are responsible for their words and their actions. If anything they said was used they can fight for their right to take it back. A person’s creative work is not owned by the platform they are providing for. In a self-governing system, people are able to create the environment they want to be a part of, without having that sense of hierarchy.

According to Fred Turner, Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant founded one of the most powerful computer networks up to the present time, the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link or WELL. Members of WELL consisted of groups of computer technologists, counterculturalists, hackers, and journalists who worked together and built a community where they could exchange information and build social networks for future employment. According to Kevin Kelly, one of the seven design goals of the WELL team was that it would be self-governing. Additionally, Turner said that, “As he set subscription rates, Brand was helping to lay down boundary conditions for a self-governing system. Like a communard of the late 1960s, he was working to establish a forum in which individuals could express themselves and form an alternative community of kindred souls” (Turner, p. 146).

One of the ways that Turner described WELL as a self-governing system was through its early managers’ way of governing it: against hierarchy and for the “power of tools.” This was evident in the way power was given to WELL members to participate in different conference topics available, join or leave conferences as they pleased, and even to create their own conferences if they would like to. Conference hosts and systems owners were also authorized to remove members from WELL (which only happened three times in the first six years, and the removed members were allowed to return). In this way, WELL’s early managers did not exercise their authority to control the system and interaction directly. Members were given the “power of self-rule through information technology.” They could use this power by deleting postings of other members that they did not like from their own screens and also removing their own postings that they wanted to erase.

Another way that the WELL operated as a self-governing system was explained through the managers’ roles in setting the conditions for the environment or the system and then taking a step back and observing how WELL’s users interact, exchange information, make connections, and build new communities, and contribute to how the system evolves. According to Turner, “The WELL as described by Kelly, McClure, Figallo, and Coate was a little, self-contained world, and its managers, like scientists, were ‘as gods’ – designing that world, channeling its embodied ‘energies’ through talk, creating settings in which individuals could simultaneously build their new community and transform themselves by using a new set of digital ‘tools’ to which the WELL had given them access” (Turner, p. 148).

After reading Chapter 5, “ VIrtuality and Community on WELL” , the idea of a self- governing system is that this one operates with little to no control. Here users had the responsibility of the content and what they posted on the website forum. It is seen that the WELL and the Whole Earth Catalog had the same views; however with the WELL forum users had the chance to interact whenever they wanted, they could exchange any type information and also they had the control to edit or to whom they wanted to deliver the information. They were owners of their words they put out, users had control of almost everything. All source of information could be found in this forum. WELL was a web-system in which users exchanged valuable information among each other,  a self-governing system there were mangers who were people who a higher level but they would only interfere occasionally.