Re: <nettime> Summary of today's meeting

[Joseph Rabie via Nettime-tmp <nettime-tmp@mail.ljudmila.org>]

Hi John, Michaël & all,

What I remember about the Well (and other similar spaces), was how a discussion could spin out really long threads, mostly politely, sometimes with anger, but where people were not afraid of using irony or sarcasm on occasion. There was an ethic of debate, a generally safe place where one could disagree fruitfully.

In today's most divisive of times, things (on social media and elsewhere) have become horribly exacerbated. Some people are deliberately abusive, in order to stake out their claim to whatever particular brand of domination drives them. Other people prefer to censure themselves or remain silent, rather than risk being construed as being abusive or suffering backlash, in spaces perceived as being unsafe.

The truth be told, Nettime has become a very quiet place over the past years, where discussion has been mostly sporadic. Yet the endorsements that Nettime has been receiving from so many people, over this period of its current "remaking", are deeply moving. Nettime deserves a renaissance in which we really start talking to one another again, disagreeing if need be, in a spirit of constructive decency.

This comes with the urgency of a world which is in terrible need of "remaking", whose "leaders" have no greater horizon than "business as usual". Nettime is a haven where there is so much collective intelligence that can be applied to that essential goal.

Best wishes -
Joe.



> Le 15 juil. 2023 à 19:10, John Hopkins via Nettime-tmp <nettime-tmp@mail.ljudmila.org> a écrit :
> 
> Hi Joe -
> 
> I joined Howard Rheingold's "Brainstorms" community about 25 years ago after I first met Howard when he was in Helsinki on a lecture tour and I was teaching (netculture) at the Media Lab at what is now Aalto University. Brainstorms grew out of the WELL scene (for those who don't know, WELL stood for Whole Earth 'Lectric Link ... it was part of Stewart Brand's Whole Earth 'movement'). Howard was then a journalist writing about Silicon Valley.
> 
> Brainstorms, which merged with MetaNetwork to become BSMN a few years back, was
> much larger than it is now, but there are still a few hundred folks on there on
> a more-or-less daily basis. It's been running on a Caucus instance for the 28
> years or so that it's been in existence. Essentially no moderation, but it is
> remarkably civilized and community-oriented (with users distributed across maybe
> 30-40 countries or so).
> 
> There are regular f2f conclaves when folks are in geographic proximity.
> 
> ...
> Cheers,
> 
> John
> 
> On 7/15/23 4:09 AM, Joseph Rabie via Nettime-tmp wrote:
>> In the late nineties, I was a member of the Well. This could be accessed by a
>> text client, or a web interface, which is what I used. As an example of an
>> online forum, it was a flourishing, exuberant space, with many active
>> conversations going on simultaneously in many subjects. The forum format
>> worked very well, it was civilised and convivial, and I miss it. Members in
>> the San Francisco area got together on occasion.
>> Are there other people on Nettime who used the Well, or similar spaces?
> 
> -- 
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
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