I’m hoping some of you will read some of the dissertation. I realize that’s asking a lot. It’s a huge, academic document. You’re busy. It has many parts. You might be interested in some (but which?). So, I prepared a short chapter guide to show where the goodies are and a slideshow (it’s bigger in the guide) to entice you to read, baby, read!
Communities of Innovation: Cyborganic and the Birth of Networked Social Media is now available for download (PDF, 5.7 MB). I am especially eager to share my dissertation with the many Cyborganics who participated in the research, sharing their stories and insights. For those who prefer a quick synopsis to the 420-page version, I offer the following diagram and abstract.
Abstract
Communities of Innovation: Cyborganic and the Birth of Networked Social Media
As a conscious project to build a hybrid community both online and on-ground, Cyborganic’s central premise was that mediated and face-to-face interaction are mutually sustaining and can be used together to build uniquely robust communities. Yet, Cyborganic was also an Internet start-up and the business project provided both impetus and infrastructure for the community. The social forms and cultural practices developed in this milieu figured in the initial development of Web publishing, and prefigured Web 2.0 in online collaboration, collective knowledge creation, and social networking.
The objectives of this dissertation are several. The first is to demonstrate the role of Cyborganic in the innovation and adoption of networked social media through an ethnographic case study of the group, showing it as exemplary of the regional and cultural advantage of “technopoles,” and as precursor to contemporary phenomena of online social networking. The second objective is to interrogate the relation between entrepreneurial and utopian practices and social imaginaries in the Cyborganic project, identifying not only their synergies, but also their tensions. Finally, my third objective is to ground celebratory and utopian discourses of new media genealogically, showing that the social media heralded today as “revolutionary” grew from earlier media and practices, similarly hailed as revolutionary in their day. Rather than representing rupture with the past, the narrative of social revolution through technologies is a cultural legacy passed through generations already, and one that draws on quintessentially American attitudes and practice.
On April 11, 2008 the power supply on our server failed bringing to an abrupt halt a bandwidth cooperative with a long and noble history, and taking with it (for the time being at least) content far more important than my blog here.
After going through three power supplies we figure one of the boards in our hardware must be shorting. Now we have two tasks–data recovery and setting up a new system. So, we’ve been offline far longer than anticipated.
Meanwhile, I handed in my dissertation on April 15, defended successfully May 13, and should at this very minute be formatting it to file by July 1. So, I’ve neglected The Participant Observer and been remiss in putting up any error message. This shall have to suffice until the blog is reborn later this summer. Meanwhile, I’ll be tweeting and answering mail at jenny@cool.org.