The cybercultural moment and the new media field

Stevenson, Michael

doi:10.1177/1461444816643789

Cited by 22 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…[…] The sublime is that, the mere capacity of thinking which evidences a faculty of mind transcending every standard of the senses. (Kant 2007: 78, 81) During the 1990s, this idea of a limitless space was associated with a long list of forerunners and prophets celebrated by media, scholars and specialized magazines such as Wired and Mondo (Stevenson 2016). Marshall McLuhan's global village (1962), Theillard de Chardin's Noosphere (1977) and Pierre Levy's collective intelligence (1996) are examples of how the idea of a communitarian global unity became part of an imaginary projected towards a definitive transformation of human history.…”

Section: The World Wide Web and The Transition Of The 1990smentioning

confidence: 99%

The Internet Myth: From the Internet Imaginary to Network Ideologies

Bory

2020

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Biography of the Web as a Myth-Building Narrative 2.2 Questioning the Myth of the Web: Media Imaginaries and Web History 2.2.1 Hypertext: The Forgotten Hero Ted Nelson 2.2.2 Retracing Old Media in the World Wide Web 2.2.3 The Web and the Network 2.3 Rethinking Web History 3. Lost Networks: The Socrate and Iperbole Projects in Italy 3.1 The Web Was Not Alone 3.2 The Italian Networking Landscape in the 1990s 3.3 Rise and Fall of Socrate 3.3.1 The Uncertain Reasons for the Failure viii Contents 3.4 The Other Network: The Internet in Italy 3.4.1 Iperbole: The Pioneering Italian Civic Network Project 3.5 Conflicting Imaginaries: Socrate vs. Iperbole 3.6 The Ruins of Socrate 3.7 Legacy Systems 4. Challenging the Network Ideologies 4.1 Imaginary Networks 4.2 The Transitory Propriety of Network Imaginaries 4.3 The Power of Limits 4.4 Beyond Networks References List of Acronyms Index Preface xiii Internet. The 1990s was the decade when, to quote Umberto Eco, this integrated vision of the network emerged, while more recently a turn towards the apocalyptic vision occurred with key authors such as Morozov, Lyon, Zuboff, Fuchs and others. But, in the contemporary 'network imaginaries' , the two visions still co-exist. The one studied in this book is already in place and has limited the possibilities to imagine other forms of network. This is a relevant aspect, underlined by Paolo Bory in the final pages: the power of limits. Consequently, this book is also an inquiry in the limits of imagining the Internet and the technologies we live by in general. Internet imaginaries, ideologies, narratives, and myths (all terms used and explained by Paolo in his book) take time to be built, spread, accepted, and maybe then killed by society. They all have effects in the long term, they need long periods to be metabolized, and their effects are persistent even if often unnoticed. This book uses history, one of the few disciplines able to grasp longterm changes and continuities, in order to understand crucial issues in the relationships between contemporary societies and the Internet. It is an attempt to retrace how the digital culture today is based on forgotten ideas, to revitalize the powerful and persistent narratives behind failed projects, and to understand how the Internet was built with a mix of mythologies, human needs and limits. Every technology of communication is a by-product of the society that created it. And in every society, imaginaries, ideologies, narratives, and myths play a crucial role in establishing a taken-for-granted and yet powerful system of looking at the world. This book ultimately aims to study the habitus where the Internet was created and, in the end, to better understand the ways in which contemporary societies decide to imagine, show, and limit themselves.

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Section: The World Wide Web and The Transition Of The 1990smentioning

confidence: 99%

The Internet Myth: From the Internet Imaginary to Network Ideologies

Bory

2020

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“…For instance, Vanobberghen (2010) has used Marvin’s methodology to explore reactions to the introduction of radio in a Belgian radio amateur magazine. For what concerns digital media, Stevenson (2016) has recently unveiled patterns of myth-making in the examination of what he calls ‘belief in the new’ by looking at how cybercultural magazines Mondo 2000 and Wired contributed to the construction of mythical narratives about Internet and the Web.…”

Section: The Construction Of the Ai Myth: A Content Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Imagining the thinking machine: Technological myths and the rise of artificial intelligence

2017

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This article discusses the role of technological myths in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies from 1950s to the early 1970s. It shows how the rise of AI was accompanied by the construction of a powerful cultural myth: the creation of a thinking machine, which would be able to perfectly simulate the cognitive faculties of the human mind. Based on a content analysis of articles on Artificial Intelligence published in two magazines, the Scientific American and the New Scientist, which were aimed at a broad readership of scientists, engineers, and technologists, three dominant patterns in the construction of the AI myth are identified: (1) the recurrence of analogies and discursive shifts, by which ideas and concepts from other fields were employed to describe the functioning of AI technologies; (2) a rhetorical use of the future, imagining that present shortcomings and limitations will shortly be overcome; (3) the relevance of controversies around the claims of AI, which we argue should be considered as an integral part of the discourse surrounding the AI myth.

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“…While the magazine arguably no longer has the same cult status it did in the 1990s, it remains an important 'cultural intermediary' in digital culture that can help make or break new startups. More generally, Wired's legacy can be seen in how subsequent actors in new media culture have similarly appealed to the web's 'nature' and a rhetoric of freedom in an effort to legitimize particular new technologies and media forms (Stevenson, 2016). Again, Ideology ' (1996).…”

Section: The Politics Of Dotcom Euphoria: Web Exceptionalism and Cybmentioning

confidence: 99%

The cybercultural moment and the new media field

Cited by 22 publications

References 20 publications

The Internet Myth: From the Internet Imaginary to Network Ideologies

The Internet Myth: From the Internet Imaginary to Network Ideologies

Imagining the thinking machine: Technological myths and the rise of artificial intelligence

From Hypertext to Hype and Back Again: Exploring the Roots of Social Media in Early Web Culture

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