First person accounts by pioneers in the field, classic essays, and
new scholarship document the collaborative and creative practices of
early social media.
Focusing on early social media in the arts and humanities and on the
core role of creative computer scientists, artists, and scholars in
shaping the pre-Web social media landscape, Social Media Archeology and
Poetics documents social media lineage, beginning in the 1970s with
collaborative ARPANET research, Community Memory, PLATO, Minitel, and
ARTEX and continuing into the 1980s and beyond with the Electronic Café,
Art Com Electronic Network, Arts Wire, The THING, and many more.
With first person accounts from pioneers in the field, as well as papers
by artists, scholars, and curators, Social Media Archeology and
Poetics documents how these platforms were vital components of early
social networking and important in the development of new media and
electronic literature. It describes platforms that allowed artists and
musicians to share and publish their work, community networking
diversity, and the creation of footholds for the arts and humanities
online. And it invites comparisons of social media in the past and
present, asking: What can we learn from early social media that will
inspire us to envision a greater cultural presence on contemporary
social media?
**Contributors
**Madeline Gonzalez Allen, James Blustein, Hank Bull, Annick Bureaud, J.
R. Carpenter, Paul E. Ceruzzi, Anna Couey, Amanda McDonald Crowley,
Steve Dietz, Judith Donath, Steven Durland, Lee Felsenstein, Susanne
Gerber, Ann-Barbara Graff, Dene Grigar, Stacy Horn, Antoinette LaFarge,
Deena Larsen, Gary O. Larson, Alan Liu, Geert Lovink, Richard Lowenberg,
Judy Malloy, Scott McPhee, Julianne Nyhan, Howard Rheingold, Randy Ross,
Wolfgang Staehle, Fred Truck, Rob Wittig, David R. Woolley
