Participation in Cyberspace: Tracing Earlier Online Communities and their Vernacular Practices
A community, as we understand it in the sense of the physical environment, is bound by place; it is a lived experience, entwined with complex environmental and social necessities, and involves all of our senses. Most of us have experienced physical communities by way of expectation and assimilation since childhood – parents sign their children up for an after-school program, a friend convinces another to join a local Dungeons & Dragons session, a teacher assigns a student to a group project with classmates, etc. By virtue of being in a particular place at a particular time, we are expected to fall into the preexisting norms, culture, system infrastructure, group purposes, and participant characteristics of that community. Regardless of whether or not the people who constitute that community are ones we understand, relate to, or enjoy the company of, there is an inherent social pressure to conform to the expectations of that group. The individual, in many cases, has a choice to separate themselves, but then must seek out another physical community where they can imagine themselves as a participant. There is a sharp distinction between worlds that we have been given, that are pre-determined for us to integrate and interact with, versus worlds that we have the power to design and choose for ourselves.
The manner in which we seek to find community has drastically changed since the Internet; rather than communities formed around common location, communities began to form around common interest, as previously anticipated by U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) administrators Licklider and Taylor in 1968:
“What will on-line interactive communities be like? In most fields, they will consist of geographically separated members, sometimes grouped in small clusters and sometimes working individually. They will be communities not of common location, but of common interest. . . . life will be happier for the online individual because the people with whom one interacts most strongly will be selected more by commonality of interests and goals than by accidents of proximity.” (p. 30-31)
The future that Licklider and Taylor predicted, that ‘life will be happier’, could not have been realized if not for the hackers, geeks, programmers, and other labeled (or self-proclaimed) ‘socially outcast’ individuals who populated the text-based pages, chatrooms, multiuser dungeons (MUDs), and bulletin-board systems (BBS), essentially paving the way for future Internet communities. What brought this motley set of digitally inclined individuals together other than common interest was the collective recognition that there was more to a community than what had previously been prescribed to them in ‘meatspace’ – here, they could form their own subcultural scene, still largely untouched and ungoverned by larger political and economic forces. Simultaneously, and through the mediation of computer bulletin boards and networks, these individuals were actively defying what had previously been appointed to and pre-determined for them; by participating in these online communities, they were enacting a form of resistance against assimilation into the dominant implicit notion that the body and face were the only ‘real’ source of person’s character. These individuals were redefining what social interaction, friendship, and community could be, rather than seeing these features purely through a physiognomic lens.
Before BBSes became a large part of the landscape of the 80s and 90s, one could approach someone who’s not in touch with what BBSes are and exclaim: “Look, see, you can dial up… and you can talk to others locally. It’s a bit expensive for long-distance, but you could do it in theory! A-anyways, you can talk, or not really talk, type, and leave messages online. Then, later, sometimes a lot later, you can read more messages and see the replies from other people!” and they may catch a worried glance that they’ve caught some sort of disease. Advance a bit forward into the present day, where texting, Facebook messaging, Discord calling, and Slacking are the norms for social or professional interchange, and while you might still encounter some skepticism from an earlier generation about the idea of building personal relationships through a computer, you’ll find that these modes of communication have become largely culturally accepted. Not only has the Internet and its platforms been accepted as purely a means of communication, but they’ve also become legitimized channels for building real, authentic relationships, having profound experiences and conversations, and becoming part of a vast network of similar-minded individuals. In tandem with this wide acceptance of communication technologies was the rise of techno-optimism and the promotion of techno-capitalism. Over the last two decades, our society has become increasingly influenced by the fundamental ideas of the techno-optimist ideology, expedited by the trillions of dollars of capital investors and Silicon Valley seeing dollar signs in their eyes.
As the twenty-first century shifted society into a dramatic technological revolution, society was confronted with something far less modest than the BBSes, where bandwidth was lean and every bit counted. As the media hailed, we had entered the ‘Information Society’, but over the course of time, as Internet communities on modern communication platforms began to feel hyper-connected, overwhelming, and more like a corporate-run illusion of what the digitized ‘one world’ was supposed to be, people had taken notice. As Kahn & Kellner elaborate:
“As it is centered on computer, information, communication and multimedia technologies, the resulting product of this revolution is often hailed as the beginning of a ‘network’ or ‘information society’. In the hands of its many boosters, the information society has often been represented as a sort of cyber ecumene, capable of bridging differences, weaving communion and welcoming underdeveloped regions into a form of ‘global village’ political economy. … traditional forms of social organization, culture and politics [were] routinely being outmoded, imploded into and hybridized with novel cultural and political modes to create a highly mediated realm of ‘technocapitalism’. In this respect, then, it is now clear that the digitized ‘one world’ of harmonious planetary communication brought about by the exchange of information is in many ways a myth that cloaks the seductive inequalities of what is better characterized as an ‘infotainment society’, a globally networked economy driven by corporate forces of science, technology and a new Internet technocultural complex” (2007, p. 433)
By looking at the history of BBSes, we can begin to extricate social technologies from what we’ve come to know as “social media” and the current epoch of social technologies. Burrows accurately captures our collective mood as it concerns contemporary technological developments: “…It is not just technology which appears to be accelerating towards meltdown, so are our cultural and sociological understandings of the world. The speed at which new theoretical discourses emerge, are disseminated, and then become passé is now absurd.” (1997, p. 235). Although written nearly three decades ago, Burrow’s text is apropos; after decades of techno-optimism for communication technologies and the advent of social media that was purported to bridge geographical barriers and bring users together where they could connect, communicate, and interact with each other, it is now frequently mentioned as being more divisive than unifying, making us more intolerant, depressed, anxious… etc., etc. The list goes on. Clearly, though, our basic desire to connect is still evident in the growing number of those who seek out community on the Internet; this fundamental aspect of human nature is seen time and time again through the different epochs.
Stone (1991) gives a periodization for the different epochs – the mid-1600s marked the beginning of a new era with the advent of printed texts. This era continued until the early 1900s, referred to as the second epoch, which saw the rise of electronic communication and entertainment media, including the radio, motion picture, and television. The third epoch emerged in the 1960s, with the introduction of computer-based information technologies, and reached its height with the development of BBSes from the mid-1970s. The fourth and current epoch, known as cyberspace, began in 1984 with the emergence of early virtual reality systems. During the most recent period, that of ‘cyberspace,’ Stone (1991) singles out Neuromancer by William Gibson, a science fiction novel, as being “...the single most significant event for the development of fourthstage virtual communities.” (p. 9). She argues that the publication of the novel:
“...reached the hackers … and it reached the technologically literate and socially disaffected who were searching for social forms that could transform the fragmented anomie that characterized life in Silicon Valley and all electronic industrial ghettos. In a single stroke, Gibson's powerful vision provided for them the imaginal public sphere and refigured discursive community that established the grounding for the possibility of a new kind of social interaction.” (Stone, 1991, p. 9)
The hackers, the technologically literate, and the socially disaffected – these groups broadly latched onto the subcultural phenomenon of Neuromancer as a cultural artifact symbolic of the cyberpunk aesthetic. This identification provided them with insight into the creation of "refigured" and "discursive" communities, outside of the mainstream public sphere. As a subcultural phenomenon, novels like Neuromancer and the cyberpunk genre catalyzed the cyberpunk view of the world: “...a shrinking public space and the increasing privatization of many aspects of social life. It suggests that close face-to-face social relationships, outside those with kin and some others within highly bounded locales, are becoming increasingly difficult to form.” (Burrows, 1997, p. 243). While cyberpunk fiction signified an avant-gardist attitude towards new technologies, it also served to map and illuminate it – people were ready to rebel against established structures. As many of these individuals fell into an increasingly technologized and privatized world and formed their own subcommunities online, there was a concurrent effect, which is still being felt today: “[although] computer technology was developed to promote and speed up global communication … somehow the effect is one of disconnection and distance.” (Elwes, 1993, as cited in Burrows, 1997)
As we began to become more comfortable with technology in mediating our social relationships, self-identities, and re-defining modes of interaction, it became clear that in our hands was access to a tool that could either “...bring conviviality and understanding into our lives and might help revitalize the public sphere. [Or] … improperly controlled and wielded, could become an instrument of tyranny.” (Rheingold, 1993, p. 14). Succeeding the multiuser dungeons (MUDs), and bulletin-board systems (BBS), chat rooms and mailing lists, in the modern day, we have relinquished our control over the social and economic power of community maintenance and moderation over to larger corporate platforms. While the hard work of community moderation and technical acumen is still seen in social spaces on the Internet, such as Reddit, we do not own the infrastructure, no longer share in the profits generated by our labor, or have the power to alter the underlying software. Current models for online sociality have, instead, been curtailed, captured, and commoditized by commercial platforms. This is in direct opposition to Illich’s view of the convivial society:
“As an alternative to technocratic disaster, I propose the vision of a convivial society. A convivial society would be the result of social arrangements that guarantee for each member the most ample and free access to the tools of the community and limit this freedom only in favor of another member’s equal freedom. At present people tend to relinquish the task of envisaging the future to a professional élite. They transfer power to politicians who promise to build up the machinery to deliver this future. They accept a growing range of power levels in society when inequality is needed to maintain high outputs… The individual’s autonomy is intolerably reduced by a society that defines the maximum satisfaction of the maximum number as the largest consumption of industrial goods. Such politics would limit the scope of tools as demanded by the protection of three values: survival, justice, and self-defined work.” (1973, p. 19)
Rather than the ‘citizen-designed,’ ‘citizen-controlled’ worldwide communications network that Rheingold called “the electronic agora” - a version of technological utopianism - it became clear that this techno-idealist view was, in many ways, a seductive myth that Kahn & Kellner declare has been replaced by our ‘infotainment society.’ Although authors like Howard Rheingold recognized the rapid advancement of communications technologies and their potential for good and bad, and encouraged society to give more precedence to “...[the] nature of CMC, cyberspace, and virtual communities”, so as to understand it in “...every important context – politically, economically, socially, cognitively.” (1993, p.15), we were largely unable to gain control of the way online communities were regulated and transformed by corporate social and communication platforms. Several failures in the wake of the social media industry, and how they have sought to govern communities while still paradoxically parading as ‘neutral platforms’, have allowed them to disclaim liability for the content posted and actions of their users, while still promoting themselves as open, democratic, and participatory public spaces. Technology, as its been sold to us, may appear to be a benign, neutral presence – but technologies can contain political dimensions to fulfill certain social or economic-driven objectives: “To our accustomed way of thinking, technologies are seen as neutral tools …but we usually do not stop to inquire whether a given device might have been designed and built in such a way that it produces a set of consequences logically and temporally prior to any of its professed uses.” (Winner, 1980, p.125)
Although earlier online communities once had a vibrant pulse, we have now relinquished our power and autonomy to social and communication platforms who have failed to produce equitable models for online sociality despite massive user populations, expansive cultural influence, and cutting-edge engineering. Unlike previous, more grassroots forms of participatory culture and stewardship – such as the SysOps, who were mentors, moderators, educators – modern social platforms provide far less scaffolding and mentorship. Despite these platforms' rhetoric of community and collaboration, users are seen as products who provide services, as autonomous individuals whose primary relationship is to the company. However, there are still some more positive aspects of online communities that remain unchanged; “...when you move to an online metropolis; the fundamentals of human nature, however, always scale up.” (Rheingold, 1993, p. 16). In many ways, the new sets of relationships that we’ve formed online still mirror existing patterns of interaction, power, and the values and organization of mass society. Today’s social media ecosystem reflects a constant truth: whenever a communication technology becomes available, a community is inevitably built around it. Online sociality is built around real people – geeks, hackers, educators, students, activists, business owners, etc. – the same people who invented the social use of computer networks, and who still seek refuge in online communities where they can envision alternative futures.
There’s been rising discussion in recent years of the ‘net generation’, or the ‘digital natives’, and while these descriptions often are broad and inaccurate generalizations, it’s nevertheless true that the human experience is changing. In this sense, one of the most profound impacts of the Internet has been its ability to foster learning as a type of social practice, where many from the ‘net generation’ have converged in social networking sites, forums, wikis, and other virtual communities to meet and exchange ideas and information. In these networks of shared interest, activity involves collectively building out, maintaining, and resourcing the community; participants seek out means for building identities and play diverse roles in the process of achieving a shared goal. Their motive for doing so can be extrinsic – such as the benefit of reputation, learning, or helping others – or motivated by social factors, such as social identity, reciprocity, or the feeling of wanting to belong. Mizuko Ito et al. extrapolate three genres of participation —hanging out, messing around, and geeking out— to show how digital and networked media are playing an increasingly central role in young people’s practices, learning, and self-understanding:
“... New media are a site where youth exhibit agency and an expertise that often exceeds that of their elders, resulting in intergenerational struggle over authority and control over learning and literacy. Technology, media, and public culture are shaping and being shaped by these struggles, as youth practice defines new terms of participation in a digital and networked media ecology.” (Ito et al., 2019, p. 14)
Evidence for the importance of social interaction in learning comes from “...decades of educational research [that] indicate people learn within social contexts and that collaboration and development of joint narrative presents powerful dynamics for learning.” (Barron, 2003, as cited in Lewis et al., 2010). Within this social learning perspective, which shifts the focus of our attention from content to the human interactions around which that content is situated, ‘situated learning’ theory emerges – in Lave & Wenger’s view, “...learning is not merely situated in practice - as if it were some independently reifiable process that just happened to be located somewhere; learning is an integral part of generative social practice in the lived-in world.” (1991, p. 35). As part of the ongoing process of engagement and participation in situated learning, we gain knowledgeable skills and become familiar with the norms, activities, and practices of a community; here, a member is engaging in a process that Lave & Wegner (1991) call ‘legitimate peripheral participation’:
“‘Legitimate peripheral participation’ provides a way to speak about the relations between newcomers and old-timers, and about activities, identities, artifacts, and communities of knowledge and practice. It concerns the process by which newcomers become part of a community of practice. A person's intentions to learn are engaged and the meaning of learning is configured through the process of becoming a full participant in a sociocultural practice. This social process includes, indeed it subsumes, the learning of knowledgeable skills.” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 29)
Consider the kind of induction into social learning via participation within open software communities; newbies participate in the sociocultural practices of a community through their growing involvement, seeking to raise their “social capital” by contributing code and ideas to the open source community. Brown & Adler (2008) detail the scaffolding process - newbies may start participating by “...working on relatively simple, noncritical development projects such as building or improving software drivers (e.g., print drivers).” (p. 19). When those same participants have ‘proved themselves’ to “...make useful contributions and to work in the distinctive style and sensibilities/taste of that community,” they may be invited to “...take on more central projects.”, or perhaps even “... join the inner circle of people working on the critical kernel code of the system.” (Brown & Adler, 2008, p. 19). Clearly, the open source movement lends itself to a very powerful form of apprenticeship, scaffolding, and mentorship – but its principles, ones of peripheral participation, contribution, informal learning, etc., have long been felt throughout the birth and span of networked communities. Today, they can be felt largely within spaces like gaming culture, which has become a breeding ground for social practices of creating cheats and exploits, game modifications, walk-throughs, or dedicated wiki pages. Or perhaps we return to our previous group of digitally inclined individuals – the hackers. Social hierarchies of hackers were complex, whose “...boundaries and circles of trust were constantly being renegotiated in often dramatic and exciting ways… membership was exceedingly controlled and exclusive. Pecking orders between groups and even between members within groups were constantly being negotiated. Intense camaraderie and friendships (and so, too, betrayals) were typical within groups. The processes to vet new members varied, but as is the norm across the hacking spectrum, candidates had to prove themselves in one manner or another – by tests of knowledge on the IRC, vetting by peers, or demonstrations of valuable exploits.” (Goerzen & Coleman, 2022, p. 21-23)
Rheingold's prediction that computer-mediated communities would "grow into much larger networks over the next twenty years" (1993b, p.2) has proven to be alarmingly accurate, as we’ve seen by the rise of social platforms that have enabled the emergence of millions of virtual communities and subcultures. At the time that Rheingold wrote his seminal piece, The Virtual Community, the pressing question was whether the rapid growth and adoption of digital media and networks would either precipitate the loss or gain of agency and conviviality among citizens; what Rheingold didn’t predict, and what many others likely wouldn’t have suspected, was how powerful digital megacorporations have become in attention engineering, surveillance capitalism, and disinformation factories. Despite the negative implications that corporate social and communication platforms have had on online communities, the web still offers opportunities for individuals to find and join niche communities where they can benefit from legitimate peripheral participation, intellectual discourse, camaraderie and belonging, and knowledge exchange. The afflictions of today’s online culture could be reduced if a significant number of individuals online were aware of how social networks and services operate, and ultimately who controls them. And while ‘media literacy’ may not be the entire solution - particularly if not treated appropriately - as danah boyd pointedly reminds us; “If we’re not careful, ‘media literacy’ and ‘critical thinking’ will simply be deployed as an assertion of authority over epistemology.” (boyd, 2018), it is imperative that communities develop awareness of how their digital lives are structured and regulated, and how their communities might be affected. The Internet, as we are familiar with today, didn’t arise from digital monopolies; it was built by millions of people from various cities and towns across the continent, who worked from college campuses, dorms, and basements. They shared their inventions and creations online, moderated and stewarded their own communities, and spent hours communicating with strangers through their computers, all voluntarily. There is an immense power to be held in virtual communities and social production – so long as we’re conversant in network awareness and know how to use the tools that we’re afforded.
Citations
Boyd, D. (2018, June 19). You Think You Want Media Literacy. . . Do You? - Data & Society: Points. Medium. https://points.datasociety.net/you-think-you-want-media-literacy-do-you-7cad6af18ec2
Brown, J. M., & Adler, R. H. (2008). Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0. Educational Review, 43(1), 16–32. https://dmlcentral.net/wp-content/uploads/files/ERM0811.pdf
Burrows, R. (1997). Cyberpunk as Social Theory. In Imagining Cities. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351171205-18
Goerzen, M., & Coleman, G. (2022). Wearing Many Hats: The Rise of the Professional Security Hacker. Data & Society. https://datasociety.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/WMH_final01062022Rev.pdf
Illich, I. (1973). Tools for Conviviality. Marion Boyars Publishers.
Ito, M., Baumer, S., Bittanti, M., Boyd, D., & Cody, R. (2019). Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out, Tenth Anniversary Edition: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. MIT Press.
Kahn, R. A., & Kellner, D. (2007). Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich: Technology, Politics and the Reconstruction of Education. Policy Futures in Education, 5(4), 431–448. https://doi.org/10.2304/pfie.2007.5.4.431
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press.
Lewis, S., Pea, R., & Rosen, J. (2010). Beyond participation to co-creation of meaning: mobile social media in generative learning communities. Social Science Information, 49(3), 351–369. https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018410370726
Licklider, J. C. R., & Taylor, R. W. (1968). The computer as a communication device. Science & Technology, 76,21-31
Rheingold, H. (1993). The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.
Rheingold, H. (1993). A slice of life in my virtual community. Global Networks-a Journal of Transnational Affairs, 57-80.
Stone, A.R. (1991) ‘Will the real body please stand up? Boundary stories about virtual cultures’ in Benedikt, M. (ed.) Cyberspace: First Steps, London: MIT Press.
Winner, L. (1980). Do Artifacts Have Politics? Daedalus, 109(1), 121–136. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20024652