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Podcast: New Models
Episode: Depeche Modem w/ Kevin Driscoll on early net culture (NM44)
Description: NM speaks with Kevin Driscoll, author of The Modem World: A Pre-history of Social Media (Yale Univ. Press, 2022), which examines the physical — and social — technology that underpinned the DIY side of networked technology’s evolution in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Parallel to institutional network culture were the proto-dark-forest communities of BBS networks and other pre-www systems. From FidoNet to De Digitale Stad (DDS) Netherlands, Kevin maps out this early territory, with a brief history of the French Minitel system along the way.
Through his work, Kevin asks us to consider what it really means to be “autonomous” online and what alternate conc...