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The untold story about how the internet became social, and why this
matters for its future "A great book for anyone who wants to
understand the early days of online communications."-Preston
Gralla, Arts Fuse Fifteen years before the commercialization of the
internet, millions of amateurs across North America created more
than 100,000 small-scale computer networks. The people who built
and maintained these dial-up bulletin board systems (BBSs) in the
1980s laid the groundwork for millions of others who would bring
their lives online in the 1990s and beyond. From ham radio
operators to HIV/AIDS activists, these modem enthusiasts developed
novel forms of community moderation, governance, and
commercialization. The Modem World tells an alternative origin
story for social media, centered not in the office parks of Silicon
Valley or the meeting rooms of military contractors, but rather on
the online communities of hobbyists, activists, and entrepreneurs.
Over time, countless social media platforms have appropriated the
social and technical innovations of the BBS community. How can
these untold stories from the internet's past inspire more
inclusive visions of its future?
The first scholarly book in English on Minitel, the pioneering
French computer network, offers a history of a technical system and
a cultural phenomenon. A decade before the Internet became a medium
for the masses in the United States, tens of millions of users in
France had access to a network for e-mail, e-commerce, chat,
research, game playing, blogging, and even an early form of online
porn. In 1983, the French government rolled out Minitel, a computer
network that achieved widespread adoption in just a few years as
the government distributed free terminals to every French telephone
subscriber. With this volume, Julien Mailland and Kevin Driscoll
offer the first scholarly book in English on Minitel, examining it
as both a technical system and a cultural phenomenon. Mailland and
Driscoll argue that Minitel was a technical marvel, a commercial
success, and an ambitious social experiment. Other early networks
may have introduced protocols and software standards that continue
to be used today, but Minitel foretold the social effects of
widespread telecomputing. They examine the unique balance of forces
that enabled the growth of Minitel: public and private, open and
closed, centralized and decentralized. Mailland and Driscoll
describe Minitel's key technological components, novel online
services, and thriving virtual communities. Despite the seemingly
tight grip of the state, however, a lively Minitel culture emerged,
characterized by spontaneity, imagination, and creativity. After
three decades of continuous service, Minitel was shut down in 2012,
but the history of Minitel should continue to inform our thinking
about Internet policy, today and into the future.
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