seeing the whole of web studies

six years later, in an essay for the book web.studies edited by david gauntlett, i again thought i'd seen the whole of the web - or, to be more precise, the whole of web studies. in "looking backwards, looking forward: cyberculture studies 1990-2000," i attempted to map three major stages of the then-emerging academic field of digital media and culture, or what i liked to call cyberculture studies, or what many of the contributors to this book call internet studies. the three stages were popular cyberculture, cyberculture studies, and critical cyberculture studies.

the origins story begins with popular cyberculture. starting in the early-1990s, a handful of wired writers and journalists began filing stories in major newspapers about what some called cyberspace and others called the information superhighway. newspaper stories soon blossomed into magazine features which soon grew into how-to books like the internet for dummies and the whole internet.

with roots in journalism, popular cyberculture was regularly characterized by a limited utopian vs. dystopian dualism (see rob kling's "hopes and horrors" and roy rosenzweig's "live free or die?"). on one side were the technofuturists, a collection of writers, editors, and especially entrepreneurs who believed that the internet would smash traditional institutions and hierarchies and usher in new means of commerce and communication. they gathered loosely within the pages of wired magazine, the most enthusiastic cheerleader of the internet revolution. (for an early take on wired, see paulina borsook's "the memoirs of a token: an aging berkeley feminist examines wired"; for a longer history, see fred turner's from counterculture to cyberculture, especially chapter seven.)

on the other side were the neo-luddites, cultural critics who blamed the then-still nascent internet for many of society's ills. for example, in the gutenberg elegies: the fate of reading in an electronic age, sven birkerts warned that the internet, hypertext, and a host of electronic technologies would produce declining literacy and a less-than-grounded sense of reality. kirkpatrick sale drove home the points he made in his book rebels against the future: the luddites and their war on the industrial revolution: lessons for the computer age by smashing computers on his promotional tour, while clifford stoll, in silicon snake oil: second thoughts on the information highway, begged cybernauts to log off, reminding us that "life in the real world is far more interesting, far more important, far richer, than anything you'll ever find on a computer screen" (13).

our second stage, cyberculture studies, came about in the mid-1990s as a result of many developments including the arrival of two books: howard rheingold's the virtual community and sherry turkle's life on the screen. drawing heavily from his extensive experience on the WELL, one of the earliest and most influential online communities (for more see katie hafner's the well), rheingold transcended the earlier question of internet: good or bad? and instead approached networked communications and interactions as online communities. likewise, turkle abandoned simple black and white depictions of internet users and instead put forth a more nuanced understanding of online identities. together, virtual communities and online identities served as the twin pillars of early internet studies.

also arriving during this time was mosaic, the first popular browser for the world wide web. developed at the national center for supercomputing applications (NCSA) at the university of illinois at urbana-champaign, mosaic was not only a technological innovation but also a user innovation, and helped to introduced a new generation of users to the internet via the easy-to-navigate world wide web. this increase in users was especially felt within academia, where early adopters of unix, Usenet, gopher, and lambdaMOO found themselves surfing the same web as many of their non-technical colleagues in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

in addition to the aforementioned, there was another factor: steve jones. with a string of anthologies, including cybersociety and virtual culture, jones assembled a collection of (mostly) communication scholars to push to new levels our understanding of online communities and identities. in 1999, he helped establish the association of internet researchers, or aoir, which, ten years later, has grown into an international and interdisciplinary academic conference (next aoir conference happens october 15-18 in copenhagen, denmark). other important and influential anthologies and books from scholars from anthropology (including arturo escobar and turkle), communication (nancy baym and mia consalvo), gender studies (lynn cherney and elizabeth reba weise, donna haraway), linguistics (susan herring), and sociology (marc smith and peter kollock, and barry wellman) helped shore up the field's social science roots.

the third stage, critical cyberculture studies, appeared in the twenty-first century.

to be continued ...

works cited:

nancy baym, "from practice to culture on usenet." in susan leigh star, editor, the cultures of computing, pp. 29-52. oxford: blackwell publishers, 1995.

sven birkerts, the gutenberg elegies: the fate of reading in an electronic age. winchester, MA: faber and faber, 1994.

paulina borsook, "the memoirs of a token: an aging berkeley feminist examines wired." in lynn cherney and elizabeth reba weise, editors, wired women: gender and new realities in cyberspace, pp. 24-41. seattle: seal press, 1996.

lynn cherney and elizabeth reba weise, editors, wired women: gender and new realities in cyberspace. seattle: seal press, 1996.

kiersten conner-sax and ed krol, the whole internet: the next generation. sebastopol, CA: o'reilly, 1992.

mia consalvo, "cash cows hit the web: gender and communications technology," journal of communication inquiry (21:1, 1997), pp. 98-115.

shelley correll, "the ethnography of an electronic bar: the lesbian cafe," journal of contemporary ethnography (24:3, 1995), pp. 270-298.

arturo escobar, "welcome to cyberia: notes on the anthropology of cyberculture." in ziauddin sardar and jerome ravetz, editors, cyberfutures: culture and politics on the information superhighway, pp. 111-137. new york: new york university press, 1996.

david gauntlett, editor, web.studies: rewiring media studies for the digital age. london, UK: arnold, 2000.

katie hafner, the well: a story of love, death & real life in the seminal online community. new york: carroll & graf, 2001.

donna haraway, "a cyborg manifesto: science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century," in simians, cyborgs and women: the reinvention of nature, pp. 149-181. new york; routledge, 1991.

susan herring, editor, computer-mediated communication: linguistic, social and cross-cultural perspectives. amsterdam: john benjamins publishing, 1996.

steve jones, editor, cybersociety: computer-mediated communication and community. thousand oaks, CA: sage, 1995.

_____, editor, virtual culture: identity & communication in cybersociety. london: sage, 1997.

rob kling, "hopes and horrors: technological utopianism and anti-utopianism in narratives of computerization." in rob kling, editor, computerization and controversy: value conflicts and social choices, pp. 40-58. san diego, CA: academic press, 1996.

howard rheingold, the virtual community: homesteading on the electronic frontier. reading, MA: addison-wesley publishing, 1993.

roy rosenzweig, "live free or die? death, life, survival, and sobriety on the information superhighway," american quarterly (51.1, 1999), pp.160-174.

kirkpatrick sale, rebels against the future: the luddites and their war on the industrial revolution: lessons for the computer age. reading, MA: addison-wesley publishing, 1995

marc a. smith and peter kollock, editors, communities in cyberspace. london: routledge, 1999.

clifford stoll, silicon snake oil: second thoughts on the information highway. new york: doubleday, 1995.

fred turner, from counterculture to cyberculture: stewart brand, the whole earth network, and the rise of digital utopianism, chicago, IL: university of chicago press, 2006.

barry wellman, "an electronic group is virtually a social network." in sara kiesler, editor, culture of the internet, pp. 179-205. mahwah, NJ: lawrence erlbaum associates, 1997.

seeing the whole of the web

in august 1994, i moved from los angeles to college park, maryland, to pursue a PhD in american studies at the university of maryland. having neither classes nor friends, i'd take my bike out to learn the local landscape. often i'd end the day at the campus computer lab, where i'd snag an empty computer and use a program called pine to access my email.

one evening, i arrived at the lab with a super-sized coffee and a goal. earlier that day, my new housemate, a graduate student in computer science, told me about a new thing called the world wide web. "it's cool," he said, "you should really check it out." my goal that evening was to see and explore this world wide web thingy.

before firefox there was IE, before that there was netscape, and before that there was mosaic, whose icon i double-clicked and there i was on the world wide web. my first web site ever was the computer lab's homepage which contained, in school colors, the lab's hours, rules, and acceptable behaviors. promptly and intuitively, i mouse-clicked a blue hyperlink and proceeded to click and read, click and read, for hours, uninterrupted except to relieve myself of the super-sized coffee.

sometime around two or three in the morning, i clicked a link that magically brought me back to where i had begun - the homepage for maryland's computer labs. i had travelled a full circle. exhausted and exhilarated, i had seen, i thought, the whole of the web.

barry wellman, that ain't right

in response to a recent thread about james watson, race, and racism on aoir-l, barry wellman, famous internet sociologist, wrote:

1. I think this list always needs to make a choice about whether to stay on topic (Internet Research -- both words are germane) or wander way off topic. (Dr. Watson). I value it for the former, and don't think this is the place for a general bull session. If others persist, I know that I will not want to read or participate, as many others have decided not to do before. (Step back and analyze who are the active published scholars in journals such as JCMC, ICS, NM&S, Info Sty, etc -- and who contributes here.)

2. But, as long as you got me going, to give my .02 re Watson, the world is filled with scientists (and politicians) making ex cathedra pronouncements about the things they don't know much about. Just like some professors I know ;-)

wow! fascinating for at least four reasons:

1. professor wellman has a long history of calling into question various topics on aoir-l, one of the largest and most interdisciplinary listservs for academics studying the internet. many of the topics he calls into question revolve around discussions of race. not cool.

2. professor wellman also has a long history of threatening to leave, or hinting that he may threaten to leave, aoir-l and aoir. interestingly, such threats often occur directly before or directly after aoir conferences. it's weird like that.

3. barry wellman equates internet research with being published in JCMC, ICS, NM&S, Info Sty. ok, first, some translation. JCMC = the journal of computer-mediated communication. ICS = information, communication and society. NM&S = new media and society. and Info Sty = um, i'm not sure what that is. second, what a limited perspective of a field that is growing all over the place.

4. barry says, "stop this discussion!" then barry says, "wait, wait - here's my opinion on this discussion!" that's called sending mixed messages. that's also just weird.

famous internet sociologist or not, such behavior just ain't right.

update: saturday afternoon, barry wellman attempted to comment on my blog but was unable to. instead, he emailed me the following message with the request to post his response. i grant his request.

David,

I have written a response to your blog. However, an adblock of Captcha is weirdly stopping my posting it. So I would appreciate it if you would post it. Thanks.

Barry Wellman

It would have been nice if David Silver had copied his blog post to me, rather than leave it for someone else to alert me to it.

He's right. I do wish the AoIR list would stay on topic, and I point it out when it's off topic. I mentioned some journals, but it was obviously a "for example" list. I don't think I should have mentioned 100s more.

David's also right: I have said "stay on topic" before to the Association of Internet Researchers list and will again. And I will probably again point out how few experienced Internet Researchers contribute to this list. Some have told me it is because of the relative absence of discussion of Internet Research. I am sad that David Silver wants this to be an unfocused bull session, or is he just continuing a long series of upsets with me?

David's "many of the topics he calls into question revolve around discussions of race. not cool" is an uncalled for innuendo and factually untrue. (Do I have to point out I have paid my "race" dues since the 1950s.) The Watson discussion had nothing to do with Internet Research, and I said so. Just as when David wanted to make political manifestos early in the days of AoIR, I wondered if that was the right locale for it.

However, David is right that as long as I had the floor re Watson, I did give my very brief .02. As I think David would agree, making political pronouncements is seductive and easy; it's certainly easier than doing systematic research.

I find this a sad post from David. I won't continue. Back to Internet Research.

Barry Wellman