User:Marie Wocher/Introduction + 1st chapter

I was 16 when I had to give a talk about Franz Kafka in front of my class in High school. Of course at this time I was more interested in hanging out with my friends than reading 'Das Urteil'. Fortunately Wikipedia was flourishing in Germany in this time. And because my teachers were pretty slow in getting along with technology or the web, we , as students, had an easy life for the next two years. It was the time when I copied all information from WIkipedia and probably stopped thinking myself. I still haven't red the novel yet, but a lot about it.

I had the feeling that I can find every information on the web and I started trusting it because all knowledge on the web was represented in such a simplified way, that I had the feeling to be able to understand everything. And if I understand something, I feel so good about it that I just stop checking the information. The era of punditry began. For the time in High school that was enough. I was satisfied with what I got from the web. I have taken everything. In front of my eyes there was opening up a new world of knowledge and I just took it.

This was the time when I started looking up every information on the web. The web became this all-knowing machine to me. It seemed smarter than my father and so far I only met a few people who were smarter than my father. I believed in the idea that the web will revolutionize our politics, economy and society. I very much liked the idea of a self-sufficient society – an ideal society that Fred Turner describes in his book 'From Counter Culture to Cyberculture' (2006) as decentralized, egalitarian, harmonious and free. Furthermore I was fascinated by the idea of a network – the possibility to communicate around the world and being able to express ideas. I thought that state borders and individual borders will disappear. I thought the internet will democratize the world, makes it a better place and make me a very smart person because it will answer all my questions.

But the more the Network-Idea is implemented, the more dissatisfied I become. Because I start realizing that the knowledge on the Web is very limited and I don't get my questions answered. Now, people comment articles, share data, exchange knowledge on blogs, Twitter and Facebook. I experience the Web as a structure where everyone is horizontally connected, where everyone can be a writer, an editor, a critics, an expert – and it annoys me and I don't trust the knowledge on the web anymore. My initially enthusiasm and my confidence in knowledge the web spits out has disappeared. I feel disappointed and I have the feeling that the web cheated on me because it didn't kept its promise.

My aim is to answer the question why there is this disillusion of promises. I would like to find out where this promise, that the Web knows everything and will change everything has its origin and from whom I adapted this belief. What where the general expectations of the web , what did the web actually promise? What did we believe concerning the Web in the beginning, how did it change and where are we now? Which promises are fulfilled and which are not fulfilled?

To understand the intention to build a network and what it promised in the very beginning, the first part of my thesis will concentrate on the time, when the first network was built.

The ARPA- or DARPA-Net was developed in 1967 of a small group of researchers led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Department of Defense. It is considered as the first network. In the beginning it connected four research institutions: Stanford Research Institute, University of Utah, University of California, Los Angeles and the University Santa Barbara. The compounds were made ​​via telephone lines. This revolutionary decentralized concept already contains the basic aspects of today's internet. ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) is now DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), in 1996 the 'defense' was added. The agency was founded in 1958 by president Dwight D. Eisenhower as a result to the Sputnik crises in 1957. ARPA initiated research projects to push the development of space technology and military technology. Only when the NASA undertake this task, ARPA concentrated on the exploration of computer technology.

But what was the intention to build a network like this? And what was it used for? If you believe Robert Taylor, who was a researcher at ARPA at this time and supervises the ARPAnet project than the Arpanet was build because of ideological reasons. In the film 'The Net' he says, that they build the Arpanet to enable people in different places who had common interests to share those interests. But maybe the reason to build a network that can connect different computers in different locations was that technology was driven by military needs as Charlie Gere describes in his book 'Digital Culture'. The conditions to build the Arpanet was the idea of the engineer Paul Baran. In 1962 he wrote a paper concerning strategies for maintaining communication in event of a nuclear war. In the 60s, in the middle of the cold war, the fear of a nuclear threat felt very real in the United States. Due to this fear, Paul Baran had the idea to create a network that waive a center, so that should any part be destroyed , messages could continue to flow along other routes. His idea was to send data in small 'chunks' and to bring them together at their destination.

Did computer technology only arise because the military was funded by the government? On the one hand computer technology, especially the development of the internet was driven largely by the needs of the Cold War. But to describe it as a product of war technology would probably only be half the truth. The other half, is the explanation why computer technology migrated from the military to civil life so fast.

The idea for this shift was shaped by companies as IBM, that promoted "The shift from vast, unwisely and expensive machines, that required a highly specialized knowledge" to computers that could be used as business machines. "The development of real-time graphical computing and digital networks, […], transformed computing entirely and laid the ground for future developments such as the personal computer and the internet and, by extension, the future shape of digital culture". (Digital Culture C. Geere p.)

To understand why computer technology became interesting for the society, we have to understand why a new way of thinking was established in this time. The atmosphere in the 60s in the United States was characterized by optimism and prosperity as well as the fear of nuclear terror, atomic weaponry, the invasion of american troops in Vietnam in 65, racial discrimination and the increasing pollution. One part of the society didn't want to ignore those issues anymore. The counter culture evolved in The USA and some parts of Europe. The movement was a white phenomenon that had a huge interest in the self-realization.

San Francisco became the place of pilgrimage for all those who behave and think differently. For those who wanted an alternative lifestyle. On the one hand the counter culture was anti technological because the movement wanted to focus on the true value of life and wanted to practice a back-to-the-basic lifestyle. But on the same time the movement was also facing technology. This is maybe due to the fact that Silicon Valley and San Francisco clashed in the 60s. 'New technology and counter-cultural thinking created the circumstances that produces the Personal computer and by extension much of current digital culture'. Exemplary for this clash of two very different worlds became The Whole Earth Catalogue of Steward Brand. The Whole Earth Catalog (WEC) was a printed catalog that listed tools and ideas that where important for an alternative lifestyle. Among other things, the Catalog listed ideas of alternative thinking, sources for agricultural implements, building/craft tools, musical instruments, aids to physical and mental self-help, care of animals and philosophy.

Avant Garde

Cybernetics