Recasting "Of Citizens and Pioneers"
Crossposting from TWN
Many months ago I posted a essay on the original TheWorkingNetwork. That site is gone now, and with it most of the content I had created. In any event, it discussed the stages of the internet as I saw them. I called out three broad eras and labeled them according to my perceptions of the people that typified each:
- Period one -- the indigenous population. These folks were the original research establishment that created and first used the internet.
- Period two -- the pioneers. AKA, the PC people, these are the folks that brought you AOL, MSN generation one, and Google one. My generation. People ten years on either side of 40 -- give or take.
- Period three -- the citizens. People that grew up with the internet. A minority of people from around 18 to 24.
The basic idea was that the pioneers popularized the internet. It was something they added to their adult lifestyle. It was about search, and information. It was about reference. It was about traversing information spaces.
The children of these pioneers grew up. And all the while they were doing that, off in the corner was a PC connected to the world. They didn't leave it alone. They used it from the time they were very young. They used it to to play games, to connect with friends, to make new friends, to populate online spaces, to express themselves and to experiment with those productions. In short, these internet citizens incorporated this new communications tool into the process of growing up.
In so doing, they moved beyond the concept of the internet as a reference source introducing the internet as a social space. Along the way they began building tools that streamlined the navigation of the new social space. That development continues today. Blogging, tagging, and many of the things that fly beneath the Web20 banner are of that sort.
In the time since that post, I've received a lot of comments. The criticisms and/or misunderstands that came up mostly had to do with the "citizens" being upset because they wanted the "pioneer" label as well. After all, they're doing some very pioneering things -- right? Well, yes, but not really the point.
Additionally, many have pointed out that those researchers I'd labeled "the indigenous population" used the internet as a social space long before the arrival of the PC pioneers. Yes, that's true as well, but I tend to think that a few thousand people collaborating is a bit different than millions of people blogging, finding, tagging/flagging, forwarding, and sharing everything from 43-things to home videos.
I've discovered that when I dispense with the labels, and the whole indigenous population thing, the explanation is easier to understand. What I'm left with, essentially, is my PC generation and our understanding of the internet as a reference source where the name of the game is content discovery, and my kids generation and their notion of the internet as a social space.
Once understood, it seems almost painfully obvious -- but I'm still awed by the ramifications. In fact, I'm going to explore them here over the next several months.
