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https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://doctorow.medium.com/when-the-town-square-shatters-a7377ed4eff>
"When it comes to the social internet, chances are that science fiction fans
got there first. The first non-technical discussion forums on the internet —
ancient mailing lists — were devoted to sf. The original high-traffic
non-technical Usenet groups? Also sftnal. (This isn’t always something to be
proud of — long before Donald Trump’s dank meme army, before Gamergate, sf’s
“Rabid Puppies” and “Sad Puppies” were figuring out how to combine pop culture,
the internet and far-right conspiratorialism into a vicious harassment
machine).
Sf’s mix of technophilia, subculture, and its long tradition of gluing together
a distributed community with written materials made it a natural for digital,
networked communications.
Long before Twitter created — and then destroyed — a single, unified
conversation that linked practitioners with the people who normally lived far
downstream of their work, science fiction had created a single, unified “town
square.”
And decades before a mediocre billionaire uncaringly smashed that unified
conversation into a million flinders, sf fans and writers were living through
their own Anatevka moment.
Twitter users bemoaning the end of the “unified conversation,” I am here from
your future to tell you what happens next."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
