John Hopkins via nettime-l on Sat, 4 Nov 2023 05:44:19 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> Report: The Network State conference @Taets, Zaandam (30 Oct 2023)

Howard's "BrainStorms" virtual community is going strong coming up on 25 years or so. I've been a somewhat regular participant since meeting Howard back in 1997 or so. It never had anything to do with blockchain. It runs on the Caucus platform. I visit it almost daily, as do most participants. A good group of people, yup, oddballs, depending on your definition of the term; widely dispersed globally, though the demographic does skew white and well-educated, and aging, as we all do. Gender mix approximates wider populations. There are frequent IRL path crossings whenever possible when folks move around. 'Policing' is non-existent, though one can block postings from other users (so as not to see them locally). I have benefited psychospiritually and intellectually from participating ... It merged with another similar community, "MetaNetwork" about ten years ago, so it is now referred to as BSMN informally. 

On 11/1/23 2:05 AM, mailinglists mailinglists via nettime-l wrote:

I got a strong sense that Howard Rheingold’s 1993 vision of a virtual utopia
got an upgrade to the blockchain-age, but not for the better if you ask me.
There was something friendly and makeshift about Rheingold’s original vision
back in the 90s. It imagined a group of oddball virtual friends “exchange
pleasantries and argue, engage in intellectual discourse, conduct commerce,
exchange knowledge, share emotional support, make plans, brainstorm, gossip,
feud, fall in love, find friends and lose them, play games, flirt, create a
little high art and a lot if idle talk”, in short, live life in all its
messiness together online (Rheingold 1993, 4). Over the years, Rheingold’s
vision has been thoroughly critiqued, especially with regards to his utopian
idea of the separation between the virtual and IRL, which the algorithmic
discriminations of social media, insurance premiums, and predictive policing
through contemporary digital systems prove belongs to the realm of dreams.


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