Me and My Big Ideas – Counterculture, Social Media, and the Future.
This book traces the development of my ideas about social media from their inception in the 1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement through my explorations in the San Francisco Bay area counterculture in the 1960’s, the computer underground in Silicon Valley in the 1970’s and the personal computer industry in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
Along the way I stop to examine the origins of the “information society”, which I show is as old as “civilization”, discuss the connection between information and politics, and suggest ways of analyzing social media through the use of metaphor.
I show how most social media developed only to the lowest level that would show a profit, and I describe possible (and implementable) forms that can serve society’s need for a well-managed public area for information exchange, which older societies had as a matter of course but which today has evolved to something more akin to a carnival midway.
My hope is that the reader will come to understand that our current information environment is not the result of natural development or unconfined genius but was structured for the benefit of the corporations who own the channels – that it was originally developed by visionary individuals working cooperatively in pursuit of a better society, a process that can restart without very much money or effort.
While I took the approach that performance would explain everything, I have finally realized the necessity of providing a readable explanation of why I have done what I did, and its relevance to not only yesterday and today, but tomorrow as well. This book is my attempt to catch up and to provide an understanding of what needs to be done and why for the many people younger than me.
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