Paper Abstract

Utopian Socialities in an Entrepreneurial World: Cyborganic 1994-2003

Paper Abstract | Panel Abstract | Questions | 1996 Questions Cyborganic Research

Based on 10 years participant observation of Cyborganic, "an influential early Web community" (Wired News, 2002) , this paper looks at the contributions of communitarian sociality to the development of the Internet industry in San Francisco in the early 1990s. An ethnographic account of way new media and technologies were integrated with pre-existing social networks and life worlds, it details the creative role of the informal, ludic, local, communal and quotidian. Cyborganic members are identifiable as part of a wider Internet culture which Manuel Castells characterizes as composed of four-layers: "the techno-meritocratic culture, the hacker culture, the virtual communitarian culture, and the entrepreneurial culture." My research investigates the interplay of all these "cultures" in individual and group life histories, community discourses, and in the wider Internet industry that emerged in San Francisco in the SOMA area (South of Market) in early 1990s. My purpose in this paper is primarily descriptive in that I seek to show via long term study how the combination Castells delineates is lived at the individual and small group level, not as separate cultures, but as interconnected worldviews and personal narratives. Yet, I also seek to present the Cyborganic case in terms of an argument about the interplay of inertia and innovation in cultural reproduction and change. One of the benefits of long term study is the ability for both anthropologist and informants to reflect back in 2004 on statements made at the height of the Internet boom (1995-97) and assess whether and how their expectations of networked society were fulfilled, deferred, transformed, or abandoned. The people who formed Cyborganic have a particular history, yet, their case sheds light on wider questions about the dynamic between innovative subcultures with anti-establishment visions and the mainstream media, markets, and industries to which they consistently contribute.