The Ongoing Computer-Internet RevolutionNote: Like the above posts, this is simply my own interpretations and opinions. It might seem like a lot of information, but the links are only there for reference and/or further exploration. Their inclusion is not necessarily an endorsement of all of their contents, although I did try to stick with free resources, things of historical significance, and items that seemed helpful in some way. If you find something useful, please consider making a backup of it.
If you would like to read this article on its own webpage (e.g.: to make the links easier to visit), please
click here.
A General Sociological FrameworkWithin the Yesterweb Summary, the terms
Core Web and
Peripheral Web are
defined. We will visualize that relationship as two concentric circles, shown here with dotted lines:
Inside of them are two more overlapping circles forming three colored areas (in
red,
blue, and
purple). These areas are a simplified representation of the motives of everyone using both the
Core Web and the
Peripheral Web. [This aspect of the diagram is based off of
oistepanka 's concept of
"Red", "Blue", and "Purple" online spaces.] Again, the
Core Web is defined by systems that seem to be predominantly focused upon
Commerce and
Control, while the
Peripheral Web has many areas that emphasize genuine
Connection and
Collaboration. The two can
overlap quite a bit though because people are diverse.
To paraphrase
the Summary, the movement of an individual from the
Core Web to the
Peripheral Web is often based upon the amount of awareness that they have in regards to the history and structure of the Internet, how various online "platforms" and "services" currently operate, and so on. That understanding can influence what they perceive to be the source of problems at each level of scale and how they attempt to solve them. Those approaches are generalized within the Summary as either "
Regressive" or "
Progressive" in nature. To summarize all of
this information in table form:
Some might interpret such language as divisive, but we are not trying to alienate anyone here. People's experiences and intentions are not necessarily rigid or simplistic either. However, if I were trying to pinpoint the defining characteristic of a "
Regressive Stance", it would seem to be the tendency to operate with prejudice and blame, whereas a
Progressive Stance would take responsibility for one's part within a system that is destructive with the hope of changing it for the better.
How can we help to facilitate the transformation of a
Regressive Stance into a
Progressive one across all levels of scale (represented by the two
green arrows on the above table)? In other words, how can we engage individuals and groups in constructive ways until all systems are wholly transformed from both within and without for everyone's benefit as much as possible?
One can assist this process by sincerely attempting to live out the
Manifesto and implementing the
Social Etiquette within one's own behavior both online and off. Let's explore some other ideas that might help.
Realigning Our Systems With A Humanistic PurposeWe can learn a lot about the current state of computing and the Internet by going into a bit of the history behind how this situation has developed. It can also help us to determine constructive actions that we can take right now to help unfold its potential. The following will cover a few broad strokes, spanning from the late 1950's to the early 2000's, and will be biased towards events that have happened within the United States. I will try to keep it "non-technical" so that anyone can read it. If a part does not make sense, please skim over it and return to it later...
To "compute" is to do math. The history of computing is ancient, but the electronic devices that we normally associate with the activity only started to become a worldwide phenomenon within the 1950's due to an increased understanding of how to produce a "transistor". A transistor is a component that acts like a tiny switch. By turning it off and on, we can control the flow of electricity within a circuit. If we combine enough of them together into logical patterns, we can make electrical circuits that can carry out all sorts of different tasks. Transistors are made out of a special type of material called a "semiconductor". This material can be used to form a whole set of transistors as a single piece. This is called an "integrated circuit", and it is the idea that lies at the basis of what most people now know as a "computer chip".
The computer chip led to the creation of the general-purpose "
minicomputer" throughout the 1960's. Before
this time, most computers were gigantic in size, incredibly expensive to build, finicky to operate, and used for specialized applications, like scientific research related to the military.
Thankfully, many of the people involved in the development of computers wanted to apply them towards helping humanity rather than destroying it. As early as 1945, the engineer Vannevar Bush encouraged scientists to use this kind of technology for
peaceful purposes. Towards this end, he designed an electromechnical device intended to aid one's memory by organizing information. He called it a
Memex. It had projector screens that would display
documents from rolls of microfilm, and one could write personal notes on them or make links between different parts.
[Image from
Jörg Rädler]
Inspired by this work, as well as that of
several others, the researcher Douglas Engelbart put together the fantastic 1962 paper,
Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework. The general premise of this document is that we, as in humanity as a whole, will eventually need to formulate new ways to solve complex problems together.
Our survival literally depends upon it. The various ways that we can extend or "augment" our capabilities was distilled into the acronym,
H-LAM/T. This stands for: "
Humans using
Languages,
Artifacts, and
Methodologies, in which they are
Trained".
We don't need to know all of the details behind how human intelligence "works" to meaningfully augment it. And further, computers could be tools (or "artifacts") that aid that process. Doug conjectured that this could "feedback" or build upon itself so that teamwork becomes exponentially better over time. To put it another way, the "
Collective IQ" of a group can start to rapidly increase when the things that are made together help everyone to work together more effectively. [This is similar to the concept of
Moore's Law, which describes how computer chips get faster as manufacturing methods become more refined.]
Doug worked at the
Stanford
Research
Institute (
SRI) in Menlo Park, California. He led a division called the
Augmentation
Research
Center (
ARC) that attempted to test out this hypothesis. By 1968, the ARC team had created what they called the
oN-Line System. They gave
a demonstration of it at the Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco (a little over 30 miles away from Menlo Park). Later dubbed "The Mother of All Demos", many of the features of modern computing were presented for the first time in an already highly developed form, everything from using a mouse for navigation to interacting with far-away people through video conferencing. This is absolutely incredible considering the state of computers at the time. But what is even more important is that all of this was
specifically created as a set of collaborative tools to help increase everyone's intelligence! It was both self-empowering and deeply unifying.
Unfortunately, much of the work and the design philosophy behind it remained obscure. To remedy that, Doug spent the rest of his life teaching others how to apply the same method that the ARC team used when creating the oN-Line System. He showed how we could structure organizations for the purpose of
trying to solve world problems. I will attempt to give a short personal summary of it here...
This is a highly simplified model of the basic capabilities of a human being:
We perceive the outside world through our senses, our "perceptual system". We transform the data that we receive through our senses with our "mental abilities". We may not be aware of everything, so it has both "conscious" and "unconscious" aspects. We express action through our "motor functions" (i.e.: anything that causes movement of the body, like the muscles). In turn, this affects the outside world. One can follow the black arrows within the above diagram to get an overall idea of this relationship.
We also make "human systems" and "tool systems" to extend our capabilities. Generally, human systems are made up of concepts, while tool systems are made up of physical objects. Together, they form what Doug calls an "
Augmentation System":
In some ways, the growth of our tool systems is currently outpacing the growth of our human systems to the point that it is causing us problems (e.g.: social disintegration, ecological damage, etc.). To stay balanced, human systems and tool systems have to "co-evolve", or develop in complement to one another. This co-evolution is represented within the above diagram by a
magenta arrow.
We can make a simplified representation of the
Augmentation System by using a rectangle divided into two halves, each half containing only an "H" and a "T":
We will symbolize the main activity of an organization, what it "does", as a box labelled "A":
Underlying this activity is an
Augmentation System (i.e.: there are human systems and tool systems that are involved all throughout it). We will represent this as a small HT box to the bottom-left of A:
Whenever we attempt to make that activity more effective, we are actually doing another kind of activity that we will call "B". B activity increases the capabilities of A by altering its
Augmentation System in some way. We will symbolize this as a
magenta arrow reaching from B into A through its
Augmentation System in the following manner:
Similarly, if we try to become more effective at increasing effectiveness itself, then we are doing yet another kind of activity. We will call that type of activity "C", and it too impacts B through its
Augmentation System. Again, we will use a
magenta arrow to symbolize this:
To use an analogy to help clarify: If we think of A as some kind of skill that we want to get better in, B would be the knowledge that we need to do that, and C would be like
learning how to learn. Notice how each of these augments the one that comes before it in some way. C makes B easier, while B makes A easier.
All together, this model is called "
The ABCs of Organizational Improvement":
The ABCs of Organizational Improvement give a general idea of how to make a group more effective at whatever it does. However, it is imperative that we make all of these activities constructive for everyone!
Not all organizations have B and C-types of activities, but if they do exist, it is important to become aware of them. If they don't exist, then we need to figure out how to create them. Only then can we implement what Doug calls a "
Bootstrapping Strategy". In this context, to "bootstrap" means to direct the activities of an organization towards something that will raise its
Collective IQ as rapidly as possible. Two things are needed to facilitate this process:
1. Each aspect of the organization needs to continuously combine the information that it gathers with the records of what has already been done, so that new knowledge can be created and applied. Doug refers to this as
Concurrent Development, Integration, and Application of Knowledge (or
CoDIAK, for short). The materials that are compiled as a result of this process are known as a
Dynamic Knowledge Repository (or
DKR).
2. There has to be a communications system in place that allows information to be easily shared and collaboratively worked upon across the whole organization. Doug calls this an
Open Hyperdocument System (
OHS). We won't get into the technical details behind this system, but we can think of the term "hyperdocument" as equivalent to "webpage". This just means that interconnections can be made between all of the different types of materials within the
DKR, no matter what form they take (whether it be text, audio, video, etc.). It is essentially a computer through which information is easily accessible.
To put it succinctly, we are attempting to use technology to increase
Connection and
Collaboration within a group of people as much as possible.
This entire method is scalable. When multiple organizations start to work together by sharing B and C-type strategies, they become known as a
Networked Improvement Community (or
NIC). [
I have touched upon the concept of NICs before.] Each organization could have A-type activities that are distinct from one another, but as a whole, they should function in complement.
It is a helpful framework for structuring communities so that the people both inside and outside of them can use technology to work together more effectively. However, we are still only scratching the surface of what was happening within the early history of computing and the Internet. Let's go back and look at a few other events that were occuring in parallel...
During the 1960's, some academic institutions had computers, but access was often limited to professors and other researchers. One reason for this was because the computers were complicated to control. It required specialist knowledge in order to write the instructions necessary to run them. These sets of instructions are known as "computer programs" (or, more generally, as "software"). The act of writing software is known as
"programming" or "coding". It is done with a "programming language".
John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz were two professors on the mathematics department at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. They attempted to simplify programming by creating the
Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (or
BASIC) in 1963. This programming language helped many students without a scientific background learn how to program computers.
Another reason why access to computers was limited was because of time. Since there was usually only one large computer within each organization, if several people wanted to use it, they had to wait for their turn. This problem was solved by splitting up the different tasks into smaller procedures, and then cycling through each of those in quick succession. If the computer was relatively fast, multiple people could use the same computer at what seemed like the exact same time. Therefore, this approach was called "
time-sharing".
Again, John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz implemented one of the first time-sharing computer systems in existence at Dartmouth. This was done upon the recommendation of a colleague at the
Massachusetts
Institute of
Technology (
MIT), located within the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts. To
quote:
In practice, each person was connected to a single computer through their own "terminal", a device which could send and receive data to and from that computer. At first, these terminals were "teletypes", a kind of electric typewriter that would print out what was happening. They were eventually replaced with "video display units", television-style screens with a keyboard attached to them.
Time-sharing created a method for multiple people to work on complex projects together simultaneously. This would have a big impact on society in the coming decades...
There were many
Countercultural movements within
the 1960's, each of which addressed
various social issues that are still important (like civil rights, sex/gender equality, world peace, and environmentalism). Thanks to groups like
Students for a Democratic Society (
SDS), many college-aged youth started to explore the concept of "
participatory democracy" and noted the importance of open communication within this process. [A wonderful description of how computers can interface with these concerns is given within the article
Participatory Democracy From the 1960s and SDS into the Future Online by Michael Hauben (from Vol. 11, No. 1 of
The Amateur Computerist magazine).] We will highlight a few examples here and try to provide some context for them.
Lee Felsenstein was an electrical engineering student at UC Berkeley, a college in the city of Berkeley, about 13 miles from San Francisco. He was part of the
Free Speech Movement protests that took place there in 1964. To
quote [*including all of the extra explanatory links of the original]:
Lee was also deeply
impacted by these events. He started writing for an underground newspaper called
The Berkeley Barb [Content Warning]. His desire for change was expressed throughout his work involving computers as well. There was both a hopefulness about what computers could help humanity to do, and an exasperation at what they had already been used for, such as facilitating war. This is captured beautifully within the 1967 poem,
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan:
[Image from
Alexander Rose of The Long Now. Notice the theme of automation helping us to be free from toil so that we can focus on getting along peacefully with Nature and each other. Of course, it does not require any special tools to honestly try to get along with one another or our environment. Ultimately, it is the values that we choose to act upon that determine the type of technology that we create and how we use it, not the other way around.]
Lee started a personal engineering practice named after this poem. It was called
Loving
Grace
Cybernetics (or
LGC Engineering, for short). It is interesting to note that the poem was first published by The Communications Company located within the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. This area was a hotspot for
Countercultural activities, especially those associated with a group of performers / activists named
The Diggers, of which The Communications Company was a part. It is worth exploring
their history, philosophy, and practices, especially the work of
Gerrard Winstanley that serves as their inspiration. To
quote [*with an extra explanatory link added by me]:
Around this same time, some inner city groups carried out similar projects (e.g.: the
Free Breakfast for School Children Program of The Black Panther Party in Oakland,
The People's Church of The Young Lords Organization in Chicago, and so on). Inequality created severe poverty within their neighborhoods and they tried to fix it from within. "
Hippie" communes also started to crop up all throughout the countryside as many people attempted to flee "
The Establishment", test out new social structures, and live by a "
back-to-the-land" philosophy. There was generally
a lot of fear around how radically different people seemed to be acting in comparison to the past few generations.
In the late 1960's, Stuart Brand went on a roadtrip to several of these types of communities. Stuart was actually a biologist / artist that helped to film "The Mother of All Demos". He had connections to collectives of artists that were dabbling in the creation of audio-visual experiences (or "
multimedia"). This included
USCO in New York and
The Merry Pranksters in Oregon. Stuart and his wife, Lois, eventually settled down in Menlo Park, California. They converted their truck into
The Whole Earth Truck Store and sold homesteading equipment.
They released
the first Whole Earth Catalog in 1968 to share all of the knowledge that they had accumulated throughout their trip, and to promote some of the tools available at their small shop.
This magazine was published by
The Portola Institute and jam-packed with information, all of it presented in a unique style. There was no rigid layout. Blocks of text floated freely among photos and diagrams. Both the content and the presentation left a deep impression on many who read it.
This focus on self-sufficiency coincided with the creation of many "
food conspiracies" around that same area. To quote:
By the mid-1970's, some of
these food conspiracies transformed into a collective called the
People's Food System. To quote:
[Pam Peirce, one of the activists involved, has given
an interview and written
an essay on the topic.]
This is just one example of how the mix of Nature, community, and technology steadily transformed throughout the 1970's.
The United States has
a history of people forming "utopian communities", and the sociologist Rosabeth Kanter released a book in 1972 that analyzed
why some of the longest lasting ones had survived. That same year, the historian Christopher Hill released the book,
The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution, which explored some of the movements that had influenced them. These kinds of ideas were given new expression as
the Counterculture began to more thoroughly seep into academia throughout the world. Scientists and scholars had become activists, committed to creation rather than destruction as a form of "
direct action". To give a few more examples:
The
Biotechnic Research and Development (
BRAD) group made a hippie-like commune to develop the "
appropriate technology" concepts of
E. F. Schumacher. Appropriate technology encourages the use of small-scale devices that take into account the impact that they have on the environments of which they are a part. The
New Alchemy Institute (
NAI) did similar research into ecology and sustainable design, publishing it within
journals adorned with psychdelic-looking sacred art. Judson Jerome, a professor of poetry at Antioch College, even got a grant to visit and systematically study some of the communities that existed at the time. This research culminated in his 1974 book,
Families of Eden: Communes and The New Anarchism. Appropriate technology groups would exist
all over the world by the end of the decade.
Ralph Scott was a student of the visionary architect
Buckminster Fuller. In 1970, Ralph leased a warehouse in San Francisco with the intention of making a sort of "technological commune". It eventually became known as
Project One, a collective of teachers, artists, engineers, activists, and people of many different interests who genuinely wanted to share information and tools. Lee Felsenstein was part of a subgroup named
Resource One.
1973 was a fruitful year.
Resource One got ahold of one of the computers that was used within "The Mother of All Demos". They set it up to do time-sharing with everyone in the neighborhood through a small handful of terminals. One was placed within a local record shop, another in a city library, and more were added at other locations as time went on. Anyone could read messages stored on the computer for free, or write a message to it for 25 cents. It functioned something like a public bulletin board, with people using it for a variety of different reasons. Resource One called this system
Community Memory, and they learned
a lot of lessons about social organization through it. To
quote [*with an extra link added by me]:
The book
Tools for Conviviality by
Ivan Illich was also published in 1973. The general premise of this book is that "tools" of all kinds, which includes how our organizations are structured, can become opposed to their constructive purposes to the point that life is undermined by them. To be "convivial" is to be friendly with one another. The author uses this term to describe a way of thinking that considers the impact that our tools have on each other and how we might intentionally transform them to be of benefit to everyone. [It is a relatively short book that would probably make a good selection for
the book club.]
Lee's father gave him a copy of this book and it inspired him to apply his electrical engineering skills towards
the making of "convivial" tools. For example, the equipment needed to run Community Memory was very expensive, so he tried to make it cheaper and more accessible to people. He designed a device known as the "Pennywhistle Modem" that same year, and came up with an idea for a "
Tom Swift Terminal" the following year.
Meanwhile, another organization that helped bring computers into public awareness was the
People's Computing Company (
PCC). It was founded in late 1972 by
Bob Albrecht, Dennis Allison, George Firedrake, and several others.
Their newsletter was also published by The Portola Insitute and modelled after the Whole Earth Catalog. Through it, they tried to spread computer literacy (e.g.: by playfully teaching everyone how to use
BASIC). The introduction on the front cover of the very first issue encapsulates this social purpose well:
[Image taken from previous link. To reiterate the text on it: "Computers are mostly used against people instead of for people, used to control people instead of to free them. Time to change all that - we need a People's Computer Company." Indeed,
what good is technology that enslaves rather than empowers?]
The People's Computing Company also started the Community Computer Center in Menlo Park. Similar to Resource One, they got ahold of a computer that they wanted to share with the public. They would have
potluck dinners and teach people how to program by making video games on it for a fee of approximately 50 cents.
In 1974, another computer enthusiast named Ted Nelson published
Computer Lib / Dream Machines. Like the PCC Newsletter, this book was also stylized after the Whole Earth Catalog and attempted to foster computer literacy by demystifying their operation. Large portions of the book cover the historical development and social implications of computing. Reading it is like looking into a time capsule. Computers were still incredibly large and expensive, outside the reach of most people. But all of that was about to change...
Micro
Instrumentation and
Telemetry
Systems (
MITS) was a company that was founded in late 1969 by Ed Roberts and Forrest Mims III after they had both left the U.S. Air Force. Ed was a computer engineer and Forrest is an
amateur scientist. Like
the chemistry set of previous generations, kits for
experiments in electronics were wildly popular. MITS originally sold kits for building radio transmitters to track how high model rockets flew. That kind of tracking is known as "
radio telemetry", hence the "
T" in the name "MI
TS".
By 1974, MITS had developed a kit for building a small computer that they called the "Altair 8800". Finally, there existed a device that was affordable enough for some computer hobbyists to own! Some of them were shocked when it showed up on the cover of
Popular Electronics magazine (January 1975):
[Image taken from previous link.]
One of the first Altair 8800 kits was given to the People's Computer Company for review. It ended up within the garage of
Gordon French, a computer engineer. At the Community Computer Center, he had met an activist named
Fred Moore who was passionate about using computers for political organizing. Together, they founded The Homebrew Computer Club. The term "homebrew" refers to making things at home. In this case, it was "
microcomputers" (also known as "home computers").
They invited others to come and take a look at the Altair 8800 as it sat within Gordon's garage. People immediately tried to extend its capabilities using the
data sheets that were handed out during that very first meeting on March 5, 1975. Afterwards, Fred created
a newsletter for the group and it started to expand.
Eventually, meetings were held in an auditorium that was part of the
Stanford
Linear
Accelerator
Center (
SLAC), also in Menlo Park. Electronics hobbyists and researchers from nearby labs would dialogue about computers while Lee Felsenstein would moderate. Then, they would all meet outside to share "computer hardware" (i.e.: the physical parts, like electronic circuits). Some had already built their own computers from scratch and inspired others to do the same. Schematics and lists of resources were printed within the newsletter to make it easy for anyone to do.
For example, in 1976, an engineer named Steve Wozniak demonstrated his
Apple I home computer to the club. The
Processor Technology company also released the
Sol-20 microcomputer, which was based off of Lee's
earlier Tom Swift Terminal design.
In this same year,
Dr. Dobb's Journal was published, a spin-off of the PCC newsletter that focused specifically on the programming of microcomputers. Printed on many of its pages were pieces of "source code" (i.e.: the step-by-step instructions that make up a program, which people can understand and modify for their own purposes). The late 1970's saw a plethora of popular magazines being published that were wholly dedicated to the microcomputer (such as
Creative Computing,
Byte, and
Compute!). Both the creation and programming of microcomputers was growing rapidly.
It cannot be emphasized enough how much the
Do-
It-
Yourself (
DIY) approach of home computing was facilitated by freely sharing schematics and source code, as well as the easy availability of electronic components that did not require sophisticated tools to assemble. Inventions of all kinds are always built upon shared resources, which includes the accumulation of insights that others have made throughout history.
As a brief aside, we would like to emphasize two important points here:
1. Many companies grew out of The Homebrew Computing Club, one of the most well-known being Apple Inc. We might even go so far as to say that this collection of events strongly encouraged the mass production of microcomputers, and thus led to the ubiquity of computers within our day-to-day lives at the present moment. It literally started with passionate hobbyists and expanded as their
Connection and
Collaboration increased.
2. One might have also noticed that much of the above took place in and around a relatively small geographic area, in this case, the
San Francisco Bay Area. Nowadays,
the city of San Francisco is filled with severe poverty, drug use, and violence [Content Warning]. There are many complex reasons as to why that is the case, but a significant factor is behavior based upon
Commerce and
Control, especially on part of many people within the "
tech companies" that operate there. To
quote [*with a couple of extra links added by me]:
Notice how points #1 and #2 interrelate. Does
Connection and
Collaboration degrade into
Commerce and
Control when people are objectified? To continue...
Two
Subcultures were steadily growing throughout the 60's and 70's. Inside of academia, there was the
Tech
Model
Railroad
Club (
TMRC) that started at MIT in the mid-1940's. TMRC members would salvage "relays" (mechanical switches that can be controlled with electricity) from the local telephone company. Then, they would use them to create complex electromechanical circuits to control the movement of their model trains along their tracks.
When MIT began to house more computers, the same kind of technically-inclined young people made some of
the first computer games. They eventually became a group called
Project MAC (short for
Mathematics
and
Computation) in 1963. Project MAC helped to create the
Multics "operating system", a set of programs that allow the hardware and software of a computer to work together.
A group also split off to program the playfully named
Incompatible Time-sharing System (
ITS), which helped further the use of time-sharing in collaborative computer work.
When they weren't obsessing over computer technology, they explored the restricted areas of campus and played
good-natured pranks on their fellow nerds. This pastime, of finding clever ways of doing things, was informally referred to as "hacking". The ones who did it were known as "hackers". The hacker
Subculture had
its own slang and
its own ethic. To quote:
1. "Access to computers - and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!"
2. "All information should be free."
3. "Mistrust authority - promote decentralization."
4. "Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position."
5. "You can create art and beauty on a computer."
6. "Computers can change your life for the better."
As the previous link summarizes: Hacking revolved around the principles of sharing, openness, decentralization, free access to computers, and using information and technology to increase democracy and improve the world.
Outside of academia, groups of young people were striving to understand how the telephone system worked out of a genuine sense of curiosity. They were called "phone freaks" (or "phreaks", for short). Their activities were known as "phreaking". At the time, telephones were interconnected by a complex set of relays that communicated with one another through audio frequencies. A sound or "tone" travelling down the phone line would determine where and how a phone call would connect.
Some of the earliest phreaks were people like Josef Engressia Jr. (known by the alias "
Joybubbles") and Ralph Barclay. Through personal experimentation, pouring over
technical journals, and other ways of gaining information about the phone system, they learned how to use these audio frequencies to control the relays. This knowledge enabled one to make free long-distance phone calls and have teleconferences on "test lines" that were not meant to be accessible to anyone but the "linesmen" who set up the phone network. [A good resource on this history is
Exploding The Phone by Phil Lapsley, author of the website
The History of Phone Phreaking.]
Phreaking saw a huge increase in popularity in 1971 thanks to the
Youth
International
Party (also known as the "
Yippies"). Despite their name, the Yippies were not a political party, but a group of hippie activists that wanted to
completely transform society by building a "New Nation". To quote [*including all of the extra explanatory links of the original, as well as another added by me]:
They started the
Youth International Party Line (
YIPL) in July of that year. YIPL was an underground newsletter that saw phreaking as a way to make a political statement. But the potential of using that knowledge to commit crimes also hit the
Mainstream through the article
Secrets of the Little Blue Box by Ron Rosenbaum, published in the October issue of
Esquire. The following year, a political magazine called
Ramparts published
a how-to article that was confiscated by police and telephone security personnel. That type of activity would only intensify in the years to come...
[Taken from YIPL Issue #2, July 1971. This is an interesting letter by
Abbie Hoffman, one of the co-founders of the YIP, to someone who read
his book and criticized his suggestions of using free phone calls as an act of protest. While we differ in our approach towards achieving it, I am particularly fond of the following quote: "As the level of technological development increases, the costs should decrease with the goal being to make everything produced in a society free to all the people, come who may. Neat, huh?" Yes! Let's make things that serve everyone and share them freely, rather than try to take control of what already exists by force. Manipulation and fighting will naturally fall away.]
Telephones and computers have a long history together. The scientists at Bell Labs, the research division of
the massive American Telegraph & Telephone Company (or
AT&T), had a hand in many projects related to computing. For example, they helped to develop the "
modulator-
demodulator" (more commonly known as the "
modem"). This device would turn the electrical pulses used inside of computers (a "digital" signal) into the audio frequences used on the telephone network (an "analog" signal), and vice versa. This would allow computers to communicate with one another over vast distances through the telephone lines. Therefore, the terms "hacking" and "phreaking" became nearly synonymous with one another as groups of hackers and phreakers started to converge.
The programmers at Bell Labs also worked on Multics with Project MAC before leaving to produce another operating system called
Unix. One aspect of Unix is
UUCP (or "
Unix-to-
Unix
Co
py"). It allows two computers that are both running Unix to share files, thus forming a simple computer network. In 1979, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis were students at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. They used UUCP to talk to Steve Bellovin, a student at UNC, another college about 9 miles away in Chapel Hill.
Along with another Duke University student named Stephen Daniel, they made the software that would become the foundation for
The User's Network (or
Usenet), a way for people across a computer network to converse about different subjects together. These dialogues are referred to as "
newsgroups". We might think of Usenet as a precursor to what we now call an "Internet forum", but one could only access it if their local college campus had a minicomputer that was part of the network.
A similar system called
BITNET would be formed in 1981, co-created by Ira Fuchs at the
City
University of
New
York (
CUNY) and Greydon Freeman at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Academic computer networks started to proliferate.
In the early 1980's,
computers were starting to become a regular fixture of daily life for people who were not computer specialists. From the outset, there were concerns about overdependence on technology, loss of jobs through automation, violations of privacy by using computers for government surveillance, and so on. [Some of those problems are captured within the 1983 book,
The Rise of the Computer State by David Burnham.] But there was also some degree of hope that computers could still be used to empower both individuals and groups, so long as everyone was computer literate.
Seymour Papert, a researcher at MIT, helped to design an educational programming language called
Logo during the late 1960's. By 1980, he had published a brilliant book entitled
Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas, which describes how people of all ages can learn complex concepts if they are presented in a manner that meshes with how we naturally learn. He also demonstrated how computers could be a helpful tool for doing this by providing a context that allows one to play around with concepts in order to understand how they work.
Microcomputers steadily trickled into public schools and libraries through programs like
ComputerTown, started by PCC in 1981. They even put together a book on how to
make your own "ComputerTown". [One of the co-authors of this book, Liza Loop, started the non-profit
LO*OP Center in 1975. It houses the
History of Computing in Learning and Education (
HCLE) collection. More recently, Liza has given several retrospective talks on
how the introduction of microcomputers affected teaching/learning and
how computer literacy has changed over time.]
Similar events were unfolding within the United Kingdom. For example, at the end of 1981, the
British
Broadcasting
Corporation (
BBC) worked with Acorn Computers to make the
BBC Micro as part of their Computer Literacy Project. The next year, the BBC aired a television series named
The Computer Programme that showed how to use it. They also made an accompanying book,
The Beginner's Guide to Computers by Robin Bradbeer, Peter De Bono, and Peter Laurie.
1982 was a watershed for home computers. Many companies rushed to join what the media referred to as the "microcomputer revolution". The
ZX Spectrum was released by Sinclair Research in April, the
Dragon 32 was released by Dragon Data in August, and the
Oric-1 was released by Tangerine Computer Systems in September. "The 1977 Trinity" was a similar wave of microcomputer releases that occurred within the United States a few years before. It included the
PET by Commodore International, the
apple ][ by Apple Inc., and the
TRS-80 by Tandy Corporation. It was followed by the
Atari 8-bit family a couple of years later. The same companies began to quickly iterate designs (e.g.: the
VIC-20 released in 1980-81 and the
Commodore 64 released in 1982).
The only problem: There was little hardware or software compatibility across all of these different microcomputers! Each company had its own line of products, and a program that ran on one computer would not necessarily work on another.
One microcomputer that had
a huge impact on the situation was the
Personal Computer (or
PC). It was released by
International
Business
Machines (more commonly known as
IBM) in August of 1981. As their name implies, IBM mainly sold computers to other businesses up until this point in time. But larger corporations could no longer afford to ignore what all of the computer hobbyists were doing and started to emulate their methods.
The IBM PC was designed with an "
open architecture", meaning that parts were "standardized" (or made to specific specifications) to allow them to be easily swapped out with "off-the-shelf" components (i.e.: what one could get at the average electronics supplier). While this made it fast and cheap to produce for IBM, it also made it easy to "
clone". A clone is a computer that could use whatever was made for the IBM PC, but that was available at a much lower price point. When IBM tried to push for a different standard to try to regain dominance,
the companies that were producing clones banded together to try to keep
the architecture open. Thus, the term "Personal Computer" became almost synonymous with microcomputers in general as many manufacturers switched over to that architecture.
A variety of "
user groups" were formed to help people figure out how to use all of this new technology. Some of them were put together by hobbyists and others by computer companies to explain their products. More "homebrew" groups appeared all over the world too, such as the
Chaos Computer Club (
CCC) in Germany, which was established in 1981. The CCC has held an annual conference about computer-related subjects, the
Chaos Communication Congress, since 1984.
Unfortunately, "materialism" (as a general attitude, not a specific philosophy) reached a climax within the 1980's as well. To
quote:
The first step of objectification is alienation, a separation between people to the point where they can no longer communicate as equals.
As we saw above, "
commercialization" was rapidly starting to increase, so computer hardware and software was becoming progressively more "proprietary". In other words, there was a trend towards creating and selling products whose functioning was purposely hidden from whoever was using them, instead of freely sharing schematics and source code.
Worse, during the previous decade, the entire 1960's
Counterculture had been steadily "
commodified" (i.e.: turned into a product that could be bought and sold). The constructive values that underlie it were completely undermined through advertising, and with its purposes derailed, some of its worthwhile accomplishments were even reversed. [The article
The Commodification of Love: Gandhi, King and 1960s Counterculture by Alexander Bacha and Manu Bhagavan provides some particularly lucid examples. It dovetails nicely with the article that we have already posted in this thread,
Changing The World Through Love.]
Richard Stallman, a hacker at MIT, attempted to mitigate part of the situation in regards to computers. He started
The GNU Project in 1983 with the goal of making a Unix-like operating system. Anyone could have the source code and alter it to do what they needed because it wouldn't be owned by AT&T. This would also make it easier to adapt it for use on different types of computers.
He explained
his stance on software at the
1984 Hackers Conference in Sausalito, California (about 4 miles from San Francisco). But by that time,
the Hacker Ethic had already started to become distorted within the Mainstream, merging with the business concepts of "
entrepreneurship" and "
venture capital". So, in 1985, he released
The GNU Manifesto to explain the reasoning behind The GNU Project. He also started the non-profit
Free Software Foundation (
FSF) to help further
the philosophy of "free software".
The term "free" here does not mean that it is available without cost, nor does it refer to the fact that its inner workings are "open" (i.e.: available to anyone who wants to understand them). While both of these are important, they are only aspects of a more fundamental issue: how people are treated. Therefore, in this context, "free" means that a system preserves the rights (i.e.: "freedoms") of those who use it. These "
four essential freedoms" are:
The first two protect the individual, while the last two protect the community. They help us to
carefully distinguish between when "the users control the program" and when "the program controls the users". The difference between the two situations is enormous.
This philosophy inspired groups of activists who were looking into using computers for the purpose of
sharing relevant information internationally, such as the
1984 Network Liberty Alliance.
Along with the increasing prevalence of the home computer, modems were also becoming more common throughout the 1980's. This led many people towards starting their own
Bulletin Board Systems (or
BBS). A BBS is a computer that other people can connect to by dialing a specific phone number. This would allow anyone that was connected to that computer to leave messages or files on it, much like a public bulletin board. The person who operated that computer was called a "
system operator" (or
sysop, for short).
During a blizzard in the winter of 1978, two programmers named Ward Christensen and Randy Suess wrote one of the first pieces of software that made the BBS possible. It was called the
Computerized Bulletin Board System (
CBBS). It grew out of experiments by members of an amateur computer group known as the
Chicago Area Computer Hobbyists' Exchange (
CACHE). They wanted to share
newsletters with each other, so Randy and Ward created CBBS as a means of doing that.
Each BBS functioned a lot like Community Memory, but in miniature. Instead of many terminals connected directly to a single minicomputer, there were many microcomputers connected through their modems to a single microcomputer running BBS software.
In 1984, another computer programmer named Tom Jennings tried to come up with a way to share messages with two other BBS system operators, John Madill and Ben Baker. This resulted in
FidoNet, a piece of software that allowed one to transmit information across BBS systems in order to create a network of multiple BBS. In 1986, a BBS system operator named Jeff Rush programmed EchoMail, which allowed FidoNet to work in a manner similar to Usenet.
The type of conversations that were only available through large academic computer networks like Usenet had become accessible to the individual computer hobbyist in less than a decade!
There were
BBS for a wide variety of different interests. One particular type of neighborhood-run BBS was known as a "
free-net". To quote:
Dr. Tom Grunder started St. Silicon's Hospital and Information Dispensary in 1984 in order to share medical information with the public on behalf of the Department of Family Medicine at
Case
Western
Reserve
University (
CWRU). By 1986, it had transformed into
The Cleveland Free-Net, one of the first of
many free-nets around the world.
[This history is captured well in
the eight-part series, BBS. If you are interested in trying to connect to the BBS that still exist, check out the series
Back to the BBS.]
Generally, "virtual communities" of all kinds were starting to gain momentum. For example, Stuart Brand and Larry Brilliant created
The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (The
WELL) in 1985. Many of the conversations there revolved around practicing
self-governance within the emerging concept of "
cyberspace".
On the technical end, The WELL uses a piece of software called
PicoSpan. It allows one to make or join public and private "conferences" (i.e.: text-based dialogues with a group of other members). On the social end, access to The WELL is subscription-based and everyone uses their actual names. Those two features were intended to encourage self-moderation. There was also a rule known as "
You Own Your Own Words" (
YOYOW) that members would agree to follow upon signing up. This meant that each person would take responsibility for what they said (including any legal ramifications). However, some interpreted it as meaning that they owned the copyright to whatever they posted and that it couldn't be shared elsewhere without their consent.
[The book,
The Virtual Community by Howard Rheingold, details his personal experiences with The WELL and some of the history behind virtual communities in general. He has also written the wonderful book,
Tools for Thought, which covers the development of computers.]
Around this same time, the destructive potential of hacking/phreaking was thrust into the
Mainstream again through movies like 1983's
WarGames. There was also the rise of "cyberpunk", a sub-genre of science fiction that deals with dystopian technology. A well-known example is the 1984 novel,
Neuromancer by William Gibson. However, these sorts of themes were foreshadowed within previous decades, like in
The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner (published in 1975) and
Colossus by D. F. Jones (published in 1966). It might seem strange to mention works of fiction, but life often imitates art, and vice versa.
[A screenshot from the movie
Wargames. If one's first inclination after watching this movie is to try to gain access to a government computer, then I think they've missed the point.]
In summary: The 1980's seemed to be marked by both a distrust of kids with computers and a rush to put as many computers as possible within their reach. Simultaneously,
an entire scene of hackers/phreakers that were critical of "authority" was flourishing on international BBS and written about in magazines like
2600. [A couple of interesting examples of hacking during this era are:
-
Out of the Inner Circle by
Bill Landreth-
Underground by Suelette Dreyfus and Julian Assange (with a corresponding documentary,
In the Realm of the Hackers)]
Businesses and government institutions scrambled to find ways to protect their relatively new computer networks. The term "hacker" started to take on a negative connotation, especially as
some got ahold of "secret" information and tried to sell it. To differentiate between the motivations of individuals, some used the term "cracker" for those who gained access to a computer network in order to commit crimes or to terrorize others, and the term "hacker" for one who accessed a computer network only for the sake of learning and exploring.
That dichotomy is captured well by the famous essay,
The Conscience of a Hacker (sometimes known as
The Hacker Manifesto). This essay was written in 1986 by
Loyd Blankenship (who went by the alias "The Mentor"). It was first published within an underground hacking magazine called
Phrack. To quote:
That might sound a bit dramatic, but one must also keep in mind the historical context in which it was arising. There was a growing distrust of the government within the early 1970's because of the release of "
The Pentagon Papers", evidence that the military presence within Vietnam increased despite the lack of public support for the war there. There was also the
Watergate Scandal, discovery of illegal espionage and sabotage being carried out by the president against
his political rivals. Both of those events had prominent features within
The New York Times and
The Washington Post, respectively.
Vast amounts of government corruption were also uncovered in the late 1970's through
The Church Committee. Some examples of what was found [Content Warning]:
- People within the
Central
Intelligence
Agency (
CIA) were carrying out
some very sadistic human experimentation programs through
Project MKUltra.
- People within the
Federal
Bureau of
Investigation (
FBI) were involved in the assassination of activists through the
Counter
Intelligence
Program (or
COINTELPRO).
- People within the
National
Security
Agency (
NSA) were spying on everyone's telecommunications without any warrants through
Project SHAMROCK.
And that is on top of the corporate
co-opting of computing, and business-induced ecological problems like the
Three Mile Island incident in 1979. Again, we see
Commerce and
Control creating severe problems for humanity as a whole. All of that would set the tone for the end of the decade and the beginning of the next...
In 1989, Richard Stallman released the
GNU General Public License (
GPL), a legal framework that would help keep software free. Anytime someone altered the source code to a program that had the GNU GPL, they would have to share it under the same terms.
Much of the creation of GNU was thanks to many hardworking volunteers who wanted everyone to benefit from it. We might refer to this process as "
mass collaboration", and it may or may not necessarily involve the exchange of money for programming. Michael Tiemann, David Henkel-Wallace, and
John Gilmore also formed a company called
Cignus Solutions in 1989 to financially support the development of free software.
In 1990, the United States Secret Service carried out
Operation Sundevil, an attempt to break up the hacking/phreaking communities existing throughout the United States. The computers behind twenty-five different BBS were seized and three people were arrested.
John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor, along with John Glimore and several others,
founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation (
EFF) in response to some of the court cases that resulted from Operation Sundevil. It quickly became apparent that many people within law enforcement lacked computer literacy, and crimes related to information technology were relatively new, so
detailed laws for handling them did not exist. Those involved with the EFF wanted to make sure that people's
constitutional rights (i.e.: those within
The Bill of Rights) were not being violated.
[The book
The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling provides a humorous and insightful explanation of these events.]
By the late 1980's, one of the final pieces of software needed to make GNU into a full operating system was a specific part known as the "kernel". Linus Torvalds, a student at the University of Helsinki in Finland, started a personal project to create a kernel in 1991. He was inspired by
Minix, an operating system based on Unix that was intended for students to learn about how operating systems work.
In October of that same year, Linus had released a workable version of the kernel. People throughout the free software community, as well as those who were interested in Minix, helped to develop it. It was eventually called "
Linux" (which could be intepreted as short for "
Linus' Uni
x", though this was not the original name).
Linus released it under the
GPLv2 license in 1992. Many people combined it with various programs from GNU to make a full operating system. These "distributions" came to be generally known as "Linux". Some of the first were
Slackware and
Debian, both released in 1993. [Nowadays, one can easily
download and install a GNU/Linux distribution for themselves.]
Meanwhile, throughout the 70's and 80's, several programmers in the
Computer
Systems
Research
Group (
CSRG) at Berkeley were extending the functionality of Unix. In order to use Unix at the time, one had to pay a very expensive licensing fee to AT&T, but they also got source code that they could modify to suit their own needs.
Keith Bostic and several other members of the CSRG tried to
systematically remove or replace the parts of the source code that were owned by AT&T, so that other academic researchers could use the software on their own computer networks. This was generally known as the
Berkely Software Distribution (
BSD). The first version, "
Networking Release
1" (
Net/1), came out in 1989. The second version, "
Networking Release
2" (
Net/2), came out in 1991.
A fully-fledged, free operating system for microcomputers was made out of Net/2 by the couple
Lynne and William Jolitz. It was called
386BSD. Both Lynne and William had studied computer science at Berkeley and worked extensively with BSD. They described the process of making 386BSD in
a series of articles published within Dr. Dobb's Journal, and wrote
a textbook on how the kernel works a few years later.
386BSD was released in 1992, and it eventually became the basis for
FreeBSD and
NetBSD, both released in 1993. Between the various "flavors" of GNU/Linux and BSD, many computers throughout the world started using free Unix-like operating systems.
Another aspect of programming that was coming to a head around this time was the use of software for "cryptography". Cryptography (literally "hidden writing") is the study of how to send and receive secret messages, keeping information "private" by sharing it only between specific parties. The less affected those messages are from tampering of some kind, the more "secure" that system of communication. Government communications often make use of cryptography. To give a simple description of how it works:
A "cyphertext" is a secret code, a message that cannot be easily interpreted because the information that it contains is scrambled up in some way. Inversely, "plaintext" is something that is readily readable. "Encrypting" data consists of turning a plaintext into a cyphertext, while "decrypting" data is the opposite. Both encryption and decryption are done with a "key", some means of turning one type of data into another. Generally, the larger the key, the harder it is to decrypt something without it.
A series of mathematical discoveries, software techniques, and hardware developments over the previous two decades had made it easier for the average person to encrypt and decrypt data using a microcomputer. This started with the creation of the
Data Encryption Standard (
DES) in 1973. DES demonstrated a general process for using a computer to encrypt data.
It was followed up by the
Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange described within the 1976 paper,
New Directions in Cryptography by the mathematicians Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman. This allows two people to securely share information by using a series of different keys to identify one another.
It was evident that individuals were becoming increasingly connected together into a "
global village" (or in economic terms, a "
network society"). There was a hope that the existence of a worldwide computer network would free everyone from oppressive governments by allowing people to interact directly. Many tried to use
ideas from cryptography to make that happen.
One example is David Chaum's 1985 article,
Security without Identification: Card Computers to make Big Brother Obsolete. The social implications of these types of systems started to become more apparent by the end of the 1980's. A good summary is Timothy May's
Crypto-Anarchist Manifesto from 1988. To quote:
Using cryptography to circumvent government control was known as "crypto-anarchy", and one who attempted to program the software to do it was called a "cypherpunk". Two of the main goals of the cypherpunks were:
1. Freedom from government surveillance by making systems that allowed individuals to communicate privately
One example of this was the work of
Phil Zimmerman, a
peace activist who created a program called
Pretty Good Privacy (
PGP) in 1991. PGP allowed people to encrypt their own data with cryptography that was much more secure than anything else easily available to the public at the time. Phil gave PGP away for free and had its source code published in book form when it seemed as if the government was going to suppress it.
While some warned that making strong encryption widely available would protect the communications of terrorists, drug/weapon/human traffickers, and so on,
Phil created PGP with the intention of protecting activists from surveillance by
despotic governments. International anti-war protests increased sharply during the 1980's because of
wars occurring within Central America and the corruption uncovered during
The Iran-Contra Affair [Content Warning]. There were also many
nuclear disarmament demonstrations, such as
peace camps and
marches, because of
the tensions of the "Cold War". A couple of well-known protests around that time were the
Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp held in England during 1981, and the
Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament held in the United States during 1986.
2. Providing systems that could be controlled by individuals as alternatives to governments overcome by corruption (e.g.: the creation of "money" by a central bank)
The article
The Cypherpunks by Haseeb Qureshi gives an excellent description of the reasoning behind the above example:
As those kinds of issues became an ever growing concern, more people began to converse about them openly. For example, the
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (
CPSR) alliance sponsored the first
Computers, Freedom, and Privacy (
CFP) Conference in 1991 at Burlingame, California (around 14 miles away from San Francisco).
John Gilmore, Timothy May, and Eric Hughes formed the Cypherpunk Mailing List in 1992 to further develop cryptographic techniques and the philosophy behind their use, as well as to make predictions of their impact on society. This led to documents like Eric's
Cypherpunk Manifesto in 1993 and Tim's
Cyphernomicon in 1994.
Meetings were also held at the Cignus Solutions offices in Mountain View, California (around 38 miles from San Francisco).
Some people within the United States government wanted to keep cryptography limited to government use or restrict the public's access to it in some way. Since WWII, cryptography was considered a type of "munition" (i.e.: a weapon) that could not be exported to other countries. They also argued that law enforcement should be allowed to break encryption by building
a "backdoor" into every electronic device as a matter of "national security".
Meanwhile, the cypherpunks saw access to
cryptography as a human right and argued that
sharing source code is a type of "free speech", including software for cryptography. They started sharing cryptographic information far and wide. Several organizations, like the EFF and the
Electronic Privacy Information Center (
EPIC), also became involved in court cases and protests against the U.S. government as a result.
Those events were informally referred to as the "
Crypto Wars". [A couple of great documentaries exploring the different goals of the cypherpunks and related groups are NHK's
Crypto Wars: America and ReasonTV's
Cypherpunks Write Code.]
The idea of computer security (i.e.: "cybersecurity") grew rapidly as the 90's continued. Hacking conferences similar to the Chaos Communication Congress started to proliferate.
Some of the first within the United States were
Summercon started in 1987 by
Phrack magazine, and
HoHoCon started in 1990 by a hacking crew known as the
Cult of the Dead Cow (
cDc).
DEF CON was started in 1993 by Jeff Moss (who goes by the alias "Dark Tangent").
Hackers On Planet Earth (
HOPE) was started in 1994 by Eric Corely (who goes by the alias "Emmanuel Goldstein"). The latter is also co-founder of
2600 magazine, along with David Ruderman.
The crowds of such conferences would eventually be made up of a wide spectrum of people, from part-time hobbyists to full-time government agents, with employees of various computer and information-related businesses everywhere in-between. The language used to describe hacking started to transform again as well. One "wore" a different colored "hat" depending on the nature of their hacking:
- A "white hat" symbolizes someone who breaks into a computer network with the permission of the "owner" of said network. This is known as "
penetration
testing" (or
pentesting, for short). Nowadays, some might also use the term "ethical hacking". When it is done as part of a group, it is called "
red teaming". Many companies and governments are happy to hire such people to secure their systems.
- A "black hat" is synonymous with the term "cracker", someone who breaks into computer networks without permission (gaining "unauthorized access"), usually to commit a crime or do some type of malicious activity. It may include "cybermercinaries" that hack-for-hire (like
NSO Group,
Dark Basin,
Appin Security, etc.).
- A "grey hat" is a person who straddles the boundary between the above two categories.
The Internet of the early-1990s was often
likened to the "wild west", and
this hat metaphor comes from the genre of Western movies where the "villain" often wears a black cowboy hat, while the "hero" dons a white cowboy hat. Of course, the classification of someone as wearing one hat or another depends on the ethics of the one doing it, as well as the laws of the land in which they are located. Most people do not distinguish between those different categories, defining the word "hacking" as breaking into a computer network.
It seemed as if the hacking of the mid-1980s, which emphasized exploring technology and playing silly pranks, was starting to disappear. The imprisonment of hackers like Kevin Mitnick and Edward Cummings in 1995 are a couple of extreme examples. [
Freedom Downtime is a good documentary on these events.]
However, 1995 also saw a flourishing in awareness of how parts of the hacker
Subculture (and the cypherpunk crypto-anarchy that extended from it) were being taken over by corporate and government interests. One example is an article entitled
The Californian Ideology by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron (from
Mute magazine, September 1995). What exactly is "The Californian Ideology"? To
quote:
To put it another way, it was thought that the increase in knowledge and the sharing of wealth would make communities of individuals connected by computer networks a force more powerful than world governments, becoming a kind of "
network state" outside of its reach.
Repeatedly, the concept of cyberspace was made into a domain with no relation to physical limitations or geographic distances, and where everyone was "equal" because individual characteristics could no longer be discerned when hidden behind a screen. The 1996 article,
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow is one example. To quote:
In actuality, we are brought back to the idea of a "wild west frontier", but this time the settlers are tech company entrepreneurs. The concept of "e-commerce" (of buying and selling things online) began to take off, built with the cryptographic work of the cypherpunks. To
quote:
That transaction took place in 1994 on an online store called NetMarket. It was made possible by PGP.
Other "platforms" followed. One example is AuctionWeb:
AuctionWeb was started in 1995, sowing the seeds for the idea of
"monetization" of user data. It did this by creating a marketplace where people could buy and sell, and then combining it with a forum where people gave each other feedback. The people who used AuctionWeb did the bulk of the work in making it an enjoyable place to be, drawing more and more people into becoming a part of it. [This is sometimes known as a "
network effect"; the more people involved, the better it gets.] Meanwhile, the owner of AuctionWeb could charge a fee for each transaction that took place and make a profit from their activity. It grew rapidly. AuctionWeb eventually became what everyone now knows as eBay.
Many tech companies would try to emulate that type of "success", but would end up shutting down in the "
dot-com crash" at the end of the decade. The situation was not looking too good for the hackers either...
In 1997, the programmer Eric S. Raymond wrote the essay,
The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Within it, Eric compares two different ways of creating software that were prevalent within the Free Software Movement:
- "The
Cathedral model, in which source code is available with each software release, but code developed between releases is restricted to an exclusive group of software developers."
- "The
Bazaar model, in which the code is developed over the Internet in view of the public."
Things like GNU and BSD followed the
Cathedral model, whereas Linux followed the
Bazaar model. The latter model was seen as a faster and more efficient way of working because, the more people that there are to look over something, the more quickly that the problems can be detected and fixed.
The following year, an anonymous source gave Eric some internal memos from Microsoft. They described how people within Microsoft were conspiring of ways to undermine and/or take control of free software. [We have covered
that history more in-depth elsewhere.] He ended up leaking those documents to the press.
Funnily enough, that same year, Eric had a hand in forming an organization called the
Open Source Initiative (
OSI). Instead of focusing on "free software" that protected the freedoms of its users, it renamed it "open source" and focused on the "practical benefits" that businesses could derive from mass collaboration.
[Mass collaboration itself has become an "economic model" referred to as "
Commons-
Based
Peer
Production" (
CBPP), a term coined by Yochai Benkler in his paper
Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm. That concept is further described within
Commons Based Peer Production in the Information Economy by Adam Arvidsson, et al.
Amazing things can be created with mass collaboration through computer networks, but there are also
some problems that arise because of the current economic system in which it is embedded. Unfortunately, it is sometimes a way for opportunists to plunder The "
Commons" (i.e.: our collective pool of resources) without contributing something constructive in return, trying to get "free labor" by taking advantage of volunteers.]
The late 90's saw the rise of "
hacktivism", using computers for political purposes. Hacking started to bleed into the
Mainstream again. To give a few examples...
In June of 1998, a hacking crew known as
milw0rm gained access to the computers of a nuclear research facility in India, the
Bhabha
Atomic
Research
Center (
BARC). They erased some of the data on them and put
a message calling for nuclear disarmament and world peace on the BARC website. A month later, they replaced hundreds of websites with a similar message. To
quote [Content Warning]:
That same year, a hacking crew known as
L0pht requested
a hearing with the U.S. Senate. They stated that, according to their research, it would be possible to take down much of the public infrastructure of the United States through insecure computer networks and they wanted politicians to do something about it before that situation could happen.
L0pht ran a "
hackerspace" in Boston, Massachusetts. They programmed
software for breaking passwords and would regularly release
descriptions of "vulnerabilities" (or security holes) within commercial software. This led to the idea of "
responsible disclosure", holding companies accountable by giving them a period of time to fix vulnerabilities before making the information public.
L0pht used the Senate hearing as a way to transition away from "grey hat hacking", eventually merging with a cybersecurity consulting firm called @stake. Unfortunately,
turning it into a business led to a falling out amongst the members.
The following year, the U.S. government would conduct an investigation called
Moonlight Maze. It was discovered that a huge number of government computer systems were compromised between the years 1996 through 1999. It was one of the first instances of an "
advanced persistent threat" (or
APT), which is unauthorized access to a computer network that remains undetected for a long period of time.
In 1999, a hacking crew called
Hacktivismo was formed as an off-shoot of cDc. They attempted to use the Internet to protect civil / human rights. To quote
The Hacktivismo Declaration (dated July 4, 2001):
Some of the software that they created to circumvent government suppression included
The Six/Four System,
ScatterChat, and the
XeroBank Browser. [The cDc is still working on similar projects, such as
Veilid.]
The concept of "
peer-to-peer" software (or P2P, for short) exploded within the early 2000's. Instead of information being stored on a central computer, it is distributed across a network and passed along from computer-to-computer (i.e.: from "peer-to-peer"). It was especially common for
sharing files, much like the BBS boards that shared "warez" ("illegal" or "pirated" software) throughout the 1980's.
This led to specific "protocols" (i.e.: ways that two computers can communicate with one another), such as
Gnutella and
eDonkey, both released in the year 2000. One of the most well-known P2P protocols is probably
BitTorrent, released in 2001.
These ideas also lead to the creation of "
dark nets", computer networks that are only accessible through particular protocols. Oftentimes, they are coupled with some form of cryptography so that people can share information anonymously. This includes
Freenet (created in 2000),
Tor (created in 2002), and
I2P (created in 2003).
Similar to the criticisms levelled at Phil Zimmerman for his creation of PGP, the anonymity of dark nets is seen as a "double-edged sword". It can be used to facilitate terrorism, drug/weapon/human trafficking, etc. But it can also protect the communications of vulnerable people (e.g.: "whistleblowers" who uncover corruption within governments and businesses). One example of the latter is
WikiLeaks [Content Warning], started by
a rather enigmatic cypherpunk named Julian Assange, who is
currently being prosecuted by the U.S. government. One might wonder if sharing information that uncovers "war crimes" (i.e.: the indiscriminate killing of civilian "
non-combatants") and
vast surveillance programs might have something to do with it...
The concept of a "hackerspace" also went through a metamorphosis during the early 2000's. In 2001, MIT started the first
Fab Lab, a place where
machines for fabricating various structures are housed and
classes are taught on how to use them. To
quote:
[Many Fab Labs share information on how to
start your own and
connect with similar groups. There are even plans to make entire
Fab Lab cities!]
These kinds of groups greatly increased in popularity with the start of
Make magazine in 2005 and
the first Maker Faire in 2006. The Maker Movement, as it came to be called, emphasized the importance of creating and
inventing in order to learn. [There are now all sorts of publications like,
Invent To Learn by Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager,
Tinkering: Kids Learn by Making Stuff by Curt Gabrielson, and so on.]
"Hackerspaces" started to become, or merge with, more generalized "makerspaces" that combined
science,
technology,
engineering, the
arts, and
mathematics (sometimes referred to by the acronym "
STEAM").
...Let's pause for a moment on this exploration of computing history. While we have attempted to create a coherent throughline across many different aspects of that history, it is highly simplified and by no means exhaustive. We will build and elaborate upon this foundation as we continue. For now, we would like to emphasize the following:
By integrating the lessons that have been learned from the past, we can create a clearer vision of a constructive future, and more carefully deliberate within the present moment as to how we can best reach it. What are you inspired to create?
Personally, I would like to see a New Nation made up of Fab Cities that apply the ecological practices of groups like BRAD and NAI, and that share their tools and research through P2P communication networks impervious to suppression by people within governments or businesses that would rather try to profit at other people's expense. This transformation has already begun...Let's not repeat
the mistakes of "capitalism", like "
industrialization" that destroys the environment and "
urbanization" that makes cities that are unlivable...
The Transformation of SubculturesThere are many different
Subcultures that are critical of various aspects of the
Core Web. Let's explore some of those issues and a few of the groups that are currently trying to address them (in no particular order)...
* Issue #0: Limited Access, Marginalization
About 60% of the world's total population has access to The Internet. Many areas, particularly those suffering from high levels of poverty, are
excluded from it. It is sometimes referred to as "
The Digital Divide", a term first popularized by the
Falling Through The Net: Toward Digital Inclusion report released by the
National
Telecommunications and
Information
Administration (
NTIA) in the years 1999-2000.
Some organizations are still attempting to fix that situation by helping groups of people build and maintain their local infrastructure. These are called "
community networks". Here are some practical how-to guides for making them:
-
NYC Mesh-
Detroit Community Technology Project (
DCTP)
-
Wireless Networking in the Developing World- The
Dynamic Coalition on Community Connectivity (
DC3)
-
Internet Society-
Alternative Networks as part of
Global Access to the Internet for All (
GAIA) Research Group
-
Community Nets by the
Institute for
Local
Self-
Reliance (
ILSR)
Many of these organizations also describe the philosophy behind their work (e.g.:
Detroit's Digital Justice Principles).
We have briefly mentioned a small part of
the history of community networks above, but there are other references that give an idea of how these systems developed and demonstrate uses that are still very relevant. To give a few examples:
-
Seizing the Infosphere: An Alternative Vision for National Computer Networking by Tom Grundner (1993)
-
The National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN) Blue Book (1993)
-
New Community Networks: Wired for Change by Douglas Schuler (1996)
-
Community Networks: Uses, Benefits, Set-Up, and Design by Teresa Vazquez (2003)
Another helpful resource is the Lone Eagle Consulting website, which has many pages on the topic (such as
The Good Neighbor's Guide to Community Networking,
Creating People-Centered Community Knowledge Networks,
Community Networking Clearinghouse, etc.).
Again, these resources might seem dated, but a lot of the content can be adapted to modern technology and issues. The
Public Sphere Project highlights some aspects that are timeless (e.g.: developing
civic intelligence and methods for
democratic communication), and covers how we might
use community networks to support them.
* Issue #1: Unwieldy In Size / Complexity, Heavy Centralization
Like a biological organism, an organization must eventually
transition from expansion towards maintenance if it is to survive. Is it possible to purposely limit the size of an organization to keep it sustainable in the long-term? To quote
The SmolNet Community Wiki:
They go on to describe some of
the philosophy behind the use of "simple systems", as well as give a few examples of the type of "technology stacks" that they might be built upon. To quote the main points:
- "Simple user interfaces are
easier to learn."
- "Simpler solutions are
easier to modify."
- "Simpler solutions have
fewer incompatibilities."
- "Simpler solutions have
fewer failure states."
They are not alone in these observations. Another list of characteristics is given within the article / video,
What is the Small Web? by Aral Balkan. He lists the following features of "The Small Web" (given here with some extra explanations in parentheses):
- Easy to use
- Personal
- Private by default (i.e.:
privacy is inherent to the design of the system)
- Share-alike (i.e.: following licenses like the GPL)
- Peer-to-peer (i.e.: individuals are connected together directly rather than through an intermediary, like a server)
- Interoperable (i.e.: personal data can be readily transferred to another system)
- Zero knowledge (i.e.: minimizing the collection of data)
- Non-commercial (i.e.: it does not cost money to use, nor does it turn people into products)
- Non-colonial (i.e.: designed for those who use it, limited in scope, adaptable)
- Inclusive (i.e.:
accessible to people with different needs and/or with different means of access)
Aral then points out how these essentially boil down to respect for:
-
human rights by empowering individuals
-
human effort by making things easy to do
-
human experience by making things enjoyable to partake in
Oftentimes, endless "growth" is tied to the centralization of power, each aspect feeding into the other. That is true of many organizations associated with the
Core Web. Like the notion of a "Small Web", some also speak of a "
Decentralized
Web" (or
DWeb for short).
As part of their DWeb Summit event in 2018-2019, The Internet Archive
tried to explain a bit of what the term "Decentralized Web" might mean. Some interesting observations were given by Mai Ishikawa Sutton within the article
From the Bottom to the Top in
Logic magazine (Issue 13, May 2021). To quote:
Mai also helped to formulate
The DWeb Principles. We will quote them here in full (with slightly different formatting to try to make them a little easier to read):
A lot of literature (both theoretical and practical) is given within its own section in the previous link. There are also a few
other resources, like
a code of ethics and
a huge map of many different projects and organizations related to the idea of a "Decentralized Web".
The artist Taeyoon Choi presents a concept similar to the DWeb known as the
Distributed
Web of
Care (
DWC). To
quote:
There is also
a stand-alone website dedicated to DWC with a list of related links. To quote:
On the technical end, there are teams that are creating free software for starting computer networks that are "distributed" or spread across multiple computers (e.g.:
Spritely Institute). [This would include the various communities on the "
Fediverse", that we can connect to through the software that we have
mentioned here.]
* Issue #2: Lack of Privacy, Security, and/or Anonymity
Much of the
Commerce and
Control that occurs within the
Core Web revolves around "data harvesting". Personal information is compiled for sale through "data brokers", or it is used to train "algorithms" that attempt to redirect people's behavior and condition their thinking towards various agendas that may not be within their best interest. Some things are
literally designed to be manipulative or
leveraged to harm others in some way too.
It is not always obvious where data is being collected from (e.g.:
online dating profiles), or towards what purpose that data is being applied (e.g.:
to influence elections). But it is apparent that we need to have some understanding of "
digital defense". Thankfully,
learning how to use the Internet safely and
minimizing the amount of advertising that we encounter can go a long way towards solving this issue on a personal level.
There are several non-profit organizations that are attempting to mitigate various aspects of it as well. To give a few examples: The
Center for Humane Technology (
CHT) has
step-by-step guides that can help people to gain control of their social media use. The
Algorithmic Justice League (
AJL) has
a library of papers that explore biases that often appear within the software that makes up "
artificial intelligence". The Data & Society Research Institute also has
a similar library of resources which covers a wider spectrum of related issues (such as the effects of disinformation, automation, and so on.).
There are many aspects to this topic. Some focus on ideology,
The Privacy Manifesto of Harvard's Project VRM being one example. Some take a legal approach, like the
Center for Digital Democracy (
CDD) and
Software Freedom Law Center (
SFLC). Some note its relationship to freedom of expression, such as
International Modern Media Institute (
IMMI). Some take a mix of approaches, like
The Citizen Lab. To quote:
Here, we will try to focus upon learning and applying practical cryptography (e.g.: the material usually taught at a "
CryptoParty"), attempting to
create software with privacy in mind, setting up
private server systems, as well as techniques for "
cyber self-defense".
This includes exploring ideas for countering "lock-in". "Lock-in" is when a person's data is being held hostage by
a "platform" that is hostile to its users in some manner [Content Warning]. Inversely, "interoperability" is designing things to work together (e.g.: making it easy to save one's data and transfer it to another "platform"). What do we do when a platform attempts to lock-in users? The writer Cory Doctorow suggests "
adversarial interoperability". To quote:
That would include writing software that directly extracts and/or removes one's personal data from a system, regardless of the policies of the platform. It also includes attempting to redesign aspects of The Internet so that people are in control of their own information, like with Tim Berners-Lee's
Solid project. [
We have mentioned it before, but it wouldn't hurt to mention it again. Haha!]
* Issue #3: Lack of Comfort, Self-Expression, and/or Genuine Connection
In general, many have speculated that The Internet has become less "user-friendly" in comparison to
how it was in the past. The video
The End of the Internet is Here by 1C2 is a good summary that gives a few relatively recent examples.
The idea of recapturing some aspect of the past is often referred to as "The Web Revival". Although there are
various reasons why one might be involved in this Subculture, it tends to be associated with certain characteristics. To quote
The MelonLand Wiki:
Some home in on the ability to create a space for oneself, referring to it as "
The Personal Web". This allows one to control how they present information (e.g.: in the form of a "
Digital Garden").
There is also a certain amount of comfort that comes along with a community where people are being genuine, with no ulterior motives. This is where the
Connection and
Collaboration in some parts of the
Peripheral Web become most apparent. To quote the article,
The Dark Forest and the Cozy Web by Maggie Appleton:
The "Independent Web" (or "IndieWeb") seems to embody the ethos of peacefully creating stuff together, and it has
a set of principles and
a code of conduct that reflects that.
[On a related note, there are groups attempting to make software specifically for collaboration (e.g.:
Ink and Switch). This is sometimes known as "
groupware". There are also technological tools that we can use to try to facilitate cooperation amongst groups.
The RadicalxChange Foundation provides several and thoroughly explains the philosophy behind them.
Some tools are similar in design to the aforementioned Open Hyperdocument System.]
Now that we have a general overview, how might we bring all of this together?
As part of the
The Berkana Institute, Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze wrote an interesting research paper entitled,
Using Emergence to Take Social Innovation to Scale. Within it they describe how large-scale social change occurs. To quote:
They describe this "
Lifecycle of Emergence" as a three-stage process, summarized here within the following diagram (adapted from the three images within the article):
We can visualize the various
Subcultures that we have described above as
purple circles of various sizes distributed across the
Core and
Peripheral Web, like so:
You might have already noticed that they all have aspects that overlap in some way. Therefore, could they be
connected together into
Networks?...
...And then, developed into complementary
Communities of Practice until they create a
System of Influence that completely transforms the entire Internet (i.e.: both the
Core Web and
Peripheral Web)? One of the most important aspects of facilitating this kind of process is to translate these constructive principles into specific practices through continual
Connection and
Collaboration! Since these
Subcultures would be sharing strategies for doing this effectively, then we might also think of them as a
NIC.
Countercultural ExpansionAppendix III of the Yesterweb Summary visually demonstrates the difference between a
Subculture and a
Counterculture. Let's put this within the context of the
Core Web and
Peripheral Web diagram that we have been using here.
First, notice that a
Counterculture begins on the outer boundary of a social structure, like this:
Then, it continuously expands, absorbing and transforming the current consensus until it becomes the "
New Mainstream":
How exactly does this happen?
Peter Gloor, a scientist that is part of
the ICKN research project at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, has studied this same phenomenon. He also uses a similar visual representation of it:
[Image from the previous link.]
This diagram is a series of concentric circles or layers. Each layer symbolizes a different "phase" within the overall process of expansion, moving from the white circle and rippling outward...
* Phase 1: Individual
A
Creator is someone with an expansive and clear vision of something to be created. They begin to gather a small group of like-minded, yet unique individuals around them. There should be a certain amount of diversity, but not so much that there isn't some "common ground". Peter calls this group a
Collaborative Innovation Network (or
COIN). It is composed of around ~3-15 people, and "everyone knows everyone". They develop a prototype based on the unifying vision of the
Creator.
* Phase 2: Organizational
After the prototype has been developed, the
COIN starts to transform into a
Collaborative Learning Network (or
CLN). This is a "tribe" of approximately ~150 people, many of which are the extended friends and family of those within the
COIN. They use and refine the prototype into something practical.
* Phase 3: Global
If the fruit of this labor is given away for free after it is refined and clearly demonstrated to be useful, then the
CLN can transform into a
Collaborative Interest Network (or
CIN). A sort of "critical mass" or "tipping point" is reached where it is widely shared and adopted. [Notice the overlap with the
Using Emergence to Take Social Innovation to Scale article within the previous section, especially its Appendix.]
Peter gives several interesting examples of this entire process, but there is one that is very relevant to us here. It is the development of The World-Wide Web (i.e.: the concept of accessing "webpages" through a "web browser", what you are doing right now on The Internet).
The computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee came up with an idea of how to implement this while working at The European Organization for Nuclear Research (or CERN)
in 1989. It was created by a small group of people, a
COIN, referred to as The WWW Project at CERN. They wanted to more effectively share academic research through
an already existing computer network. [There is actually
a simulation of Nexus, the first "web browser", for those that are curious about what it was like.]
This eventually became the foundation for
The World-Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a
CLN that creates the standards that make up The World-Wide Web. Many things transformed that
CLN into a
CIN, but one particular chain of events helped it to spread far and wide: the publically-funded refinement of
NCSA Mosaic and
the easy availability of the Netscape Navigator web browser that was based off of it. In short, the tools needed to access and publish on The Web were free, so a large number of people used them until it became fairly common to do these things all around the world.
Now, how can we use this model to organize a group?
Peter Gloor has
several lectures and books (e.g.:
Swarm Creativity,
Coolhunting, and
Coolfarming) that cover this topic in-depth. Here, I will attempt to give a simple summary of a few important details...
* First, we will cover the motivations of the people within the
COIN. Peter distinguishes between a "
Crowd" and a "
Swarm":
- A
Crowd is a group of people that are "extrinsically motivated". In other words, what they do is motivated by things that are external to them (such as money, power, and glory). That makes them, as Peter puts it, "stupid".
- A
Swarm is a group of peole that are "intrinsically motivated". In other words, what they do is motivated by things that are internal to them (such as love). That makes them, as Peter puts it, "smart".
This might seem trivial, but the intentions that underlie a project often become manifest all throughout it. When we make it our aim to serve everyone instead of attempting to "profit" at their expense, then we All benefit. To loosely quote Peter, "A
COIN is about everything other than coin." Human beings and human relationships
do not have a monetary value. They are priceless.
This kind of alturism is evident within The World-Wide Web as well. To quote the article
Making the Web For Everyone by Jay Hoffmann [from The History of The Web]:
Agapic Love, a caring that embraces everyone and everything, is what allows things to truly become global and persist through time. Technology is just an amplifier of what already exists within human hearts and minds.
* Next, we will cover how the people within the
COIN communicate with one another. Peter used the field of
Network Science to describe these interactions. We can think of them as having three "dimensions":
-
Degree of Connectivity: This is how many neighbors each person has within the group. They can have few or many. [This is also sometimes referred to as a person's "
centrality" within the network.]
-
Degree of Interactivity: This is how quickly people respond to one another. It could be slow or fast.
-
Degree of Sharing: This how information spreads throughout the group. It could be personal (i.e.: centralized within a small portion of it) or communal (i.e.: distributed throughout).
One-on-one conversations among a small group of people tend to make a "
Star" network, which looks something like this:
The dots (or "nodes") represent people, while the lines (or "edges") represent their messages with one another. In a
Star network, there are few neighbors, slow responses, and information is personal.
When many conversations are occuring in parallel within a large group of people, then it tends to form a "
Galaxy" network:
In a
Galaxy network, there are many neighbors, fast responses, and information is communal.
Ideally, we want to transition from
Stars into
Galaxies as much as possible as a
COIN grows into a
CLN, and as a
CLN grows into a
CIN.
* Finally, we will cover the six main characteristics that signal a
COIN is operating effectively:
1.
Central Leaders - There are individuals who take initiative without becoming tyrannical.
2.
Rotating Leaderships - People cycle through different roles, taking turns in doing different tasks. Each empowers all others, so there is no rigid hierarchy.
Notice how these first two balance one another. [We can even make analogies between techniques used by organizers within the Civil Rights movement, like
Ella Baker's "Group-Centered Leadership". Another relevant reference is
The Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman, especially the "Principles of Democratic Structuring" section at the very end.
Madness had shared this article when talking about community building.]
3.
Balanced Contribution - People are engaged. They are genuinely interested in what is happening.
4.
Rapid Response - Replies occur in quick bursts, not an endless stream that drowns out important points.
5.
Honest Sentiment - People are personally committed, open and honest about their thoughts and feelings.
6.
Innovative Language - A unique way of speaking starts to develop amongst the group because they have grown to deeply understand one another.
In general, there is a high amount of transparency and trust throughout.
Like the previous section, this approach shows that it is possible to channel the most constructive aspects of the
Peripheral Web towards the transformation and/or replacement of the destructive aspects of the
Core Web as a whole! Computing can be
social, yet also
human-centered in a way that is constructive for everyone, both online and off. Hopefully, the ideas, resources, and tools that we have pointed out here can help all of us to do that. We will continue to share a lot more as we continue our explorations together.
ConclusionWe have covered a bit of the historical background and sociological aspects of the situation, as well as some of their dynamics and the philosophies that drive them. In the next part, we will elaborate upon all of this, but with an emphasis on the technical details and how things are built. The third and final part will speak more on the psychology of organization and how it impacts our institutions offline, both in the short-term and the long-term, and from the level of the individual to human civilization as a whole.
Thank you so much for reading!