Material Computer
June 13th, 2009 (Culture)
The culture surrounding computers and programmers and sub-cultures that grow up in various corners of the internet have been a growing interest to me as of late. Wikipedia refers to these type of cultures as Cybercultures.
At some point, I am going to set up a separate blog (Material Computer) dedicated solely to observations, analysis and possibly some original contributions to this internet culture. I will be looking at various parts of life that this culture has shaped, including language, clothing, lifestyles, law, music, businesses and much more. Until I get the Material Computer website up and running, I’ll start putting content on this blog under the “Culture” category.
I thought I would start with a top 10 list of technologies that have fostered the growth of internet subcultures:
- World Wide Web – The WWW is made up of web pages that you can see through your favorite web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, etc…). Duh, without this we would not have websites like Facebook or Twitter which is where you probably spend most of your time online.
- Instant Messaging (IM) – First made popular by AOL in 1997 (although the technology itself actually started as chat rooms in the early 90′s which birthed the first client/server IM software – ICQ in 1996), IM soon became a platform on which a new language of emoticons and abbreviations for frequently used words and phrases was born.
- Digital Video (and Still) Cameras – These consumer devices enable anyone to easily create content to share with the rest of the world. Without these, we would not have YouTube.
- Internet Relay Chat (IRC) – IRC is protocol that has enabled a huge (and I mean massive) chat room community to grow and develop into all kinds of niche communities of its own.
- Blogging – It’s such a simple concept – write something and publish it online for free. As simple as this may be, bloggers have molded and influenced thinking on the internet in many of the same ways that traditional media so influences our thoughts in the offline world.
- Email – This technology has totally revolutionized business communication. While the kids don’t use it as much as their parents do, email is still around in almost the same form it was at its inception.
- Adobe Flash – A technology that not only provides rich website interfaces, but also powers much of the online video delivery that communities such as YouTube are built on.
- RSS – Really Simple Syndication. Not really much of a technology, but its simplicity has made online content much more easily accessible.
- Podcasting – Built on the simple technology of RSS for notification of content delivery, the new media of podcasting is enabling audio and video content creators to shape the online world in much the same way that bloggers have done in the past.
- Open Source Software – The community around open source software is brilliant because by nature, most open source projects are community driven. Just ask Jono Bacon the Ubuntu Community Manager.
nice of you to explain what each of these things are, and it will be interesting to see how you use descriptions to “build” a culture out of it all for us….
Great blog posting! I remember the days of using MIRC to chat with people all over the place as well as AOL IM. I have a feeling AOL IM will drop out all together eventually with the ability to chat through facebook, myspace, and gmail.