Monday, Mar 17

• In Class: Lecture on Appropriate Technology
• Start Reading the Turner piece for Thursday
  • Suggested Reading: Katie Hefner, “The Epic Saga of The WELL,” Wired, 1 May 1997. This is the article that’s cited & linked in the Turner piece assigned for this week.

Wednesday, Mar 19

• Read: Fred Tuner, “Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy: The WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community,” Technology and Culture, Vol. 46 (2005): 486-512.
  • Suggested Reading: “Don’t Be Evil: Fred Turner on Utopias, Frontiers, and Brogrammers,” Logic, No. 3, Dec 1, 2017.

For further reading & research

• “The Real Legacy of Stewart Brand,” Tech Won’t Save Us, Ep. #126, 28
• Whole Earth Catalog, Fall 1968 – this is a PDF scan of the entire (massive) first issue.
• Howard Rheingold, Counterculture Origins of Cyberculture, Part 1: John Coate & The Farm.
• Video: Howard Rheingold on early days of the WELL.
• Eileen Cartter, “Looking At the ‘Whole Earth Catalog’ While the World Falls Apart,” Garage Magazine, No. 18, 5 Apr 2020.
• I strongly recommend watching at least the first hour of The Internet’s Own Boy if you’ve never seen it before. It’s about the late computer prodigy, Aaron Swartz, and broader battles over access to information in the digital era.
• Samantha Cole, “The Death of Rusty n Edie’s, One of the Horniest Places on the 90s Internet,” Vice, 2 Feb 2022.
• Dale Beran, “4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump,” Medium, 14 Feb 2017.
• “The Shaping of the Personal Computer” and “The Internet,” in eds. Martin Campbell-Kelly et. al., Computer: A History of the Information Machine, 229-251 & 275-305.
• “How the Internet Works” – a useful introductory book chapter, despite being published in 1992.
• Paul Levinson, “Blogging,” New New Media (Pearson, 2009).
• Old Video Game & Anime Fansites.
• Ian Bogost, “The Internet Is Just Investment Banking Now,” The Atlantic, 4 Feb 2022. Note: print issues ofThe Atlantic are also accessible via Penn State Libraries.