Conversation

I kinda think of these 80s roots Internet mafias as the last examples of true cultural cronyism. My own networks are aughts-and-tens vintage and have a looser, more open feel, more hobo network than crony scene. More atomized, less intimate. 30 years makes a big difference.
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These 80s types talk in decades-long coherent conversations that started in paper magazines and clubby irl scenes. Our crowd mostly leaves chalk-mark hieroglyphics behind digital dumpsters for each other. I don’t even really know who is in the hobo network. Have keys, can decode.
Replying to
I’m a bit jealous, but otoh, the ability to form the kind of clique that started with the 80s Well has now been democratized and any random group can create an ongoing sense-making tradition. No famous sci-fi thought leaders needed to lead the charge. Commoditized.
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I like the Well because they seem to have fun (from what I can see) and have retained that ability over 35y. Kinda impressive for a living scene that’s grown up with a major technology and studded with a bunch of network celebrities as Fred Turner called them.
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No wonder they spotted the “curator” pattern in geopolitics. This crowd: Brand, Sterling, O’Reilly... they’re the digital-cultural equivalents. It happened on the internet relative to mass media “nation states” before it happened in geopolitics.
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