March 28 - 3 of Wands

The three of wands, the 1980s and 90s grassroots internet. Names of grassroots internet sites, organizations, and infrastructure are listed on a cheerful psychedelic background with a rainbow and two suns at the bottom: nettime (1995), Rhizome (1996), The Well (1985), listserv software (1986), usenet (1994), mute/metamute, IGC (1987), APC (1990), ISEA (1988), Politics of the Net and LambdaMOO.

Progress, and moving forward with wisdom and foresight.

This particular card was like seeing an old friend, OMG, ListServ!! Metamute! Rhizome!! When I think of sites and infrastructure like these, that's what was... and is, exciting about the internet to me. To think that some people just scroll the walled garden social media of their choice, feel bad, and decide "the internet is bad" is, david lynch voice: such a sadness!!

I run my email newsletter through a listserv host because I don't think any of these trendy new newsletter platforms are going to be around that long, or they're just openly the funded cultural circuit for fascists. Still, it's undeniable that the things here which are not totally defunct have been significantly wound down by how the internet changed, from their peaks of activity.

There's the routine call: Go back to forums! And I've tried this, but one has never reached the level of interest and regularity for me that it lasted. Same for non-substack grift email newsletters, and, while I am a big believer in homepages, there's a lot less sense of being linked to and read by others than there was even a few years ago... It doesn't make me think social media is -good- of course, but it does make me wonder...

These platforms all displayed wisdom and foresight, but something about their times have passed... What can we learn from them to build our own momentum going forward?