David: Yes, I see that now. I was not reading carefully enough.
Thomas: The extent of your experiences with the internet even in the
mid-eighties are amazing. I was an undergraduate at Berkeley between 1989
and 1994. By the end of my time there I knew lots of people who were using
email, but most of those I knew (myself included) were not among them. On
the other hand, I recall that even in junior high (8th and 9th grade--or
1984-6) we used to connect to the internet through our school's computer
lab. But except among a select pool of cognoscenti (again, I was not among
them) we didn't really know what it was we were connecting to. So I guess
I'm not surprised Foucault would have failed to anticipate the importance of
the web. I wish you luck on your research, and look forward to hearing more
about what you find. It will be especially interesting to think about the
extent to which Foucauldian concepts are useful (or not) to analyzing this
phenomenon.
Regards,
Nate
On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 12:24 AM, David McInerney <vagabond@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I was referring to 1984 & 1994, 1984 as when Foucault died, and 1994
> as a decade later when I was an honours student at Flinders University.
>
> In Australia undergrads generally didn't have access to the internet
> until the late '90s. My first experience of the internet was when I
> started as a doctoral candidate at ANU in 1995. Undergrads there
> were also using it, mainly in student residences.
>
> Which underlines my point: the 'internet' was just servers within
> university campuses, government offices etc for a long time. It was
> only when people started to access it from home that it became a big
> thing.
>
>
> On 05/06/2010, at 1:36 PM, Thomas Lord wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 2010-06-04 at 23:52 -0400, Nathaniel Roberts wrote:
> >> Thomas,
> >>
> >> Please note that Foucault died in 1984, not 1994. McInnerny's
> >> comments
> >> refer to 1984. But you are certainly right that lots of
> >> undergraduates were
> >> using the internet by 1994.
> >
> > Fair enough. As points of curiosity, not arguing....
> >
> > In 1984 I went to Johns Hopkins and got a first taste
> > of using the internet. In 1985 I transferred to
> > Carnegie-Mellon Univiersity and got a much larger taste
> > that involved the entire campus community. By 1987
> > not only had every undergrad been on the net for while
> > but there were controversial studies of online porn and
> > some of us were test subjects for the precursors of
> > what is today DSL. This was a cross-campus phenomenon
> > although not universal at all schools. My earliest
> > experiences go back to around 1983.
> >
> > More importantly, the discourse around building the
> > thing (or something similar) and deploying it for hoi
> > poloi goes back long before that. An interesting
> > aspect of the way "web 2.0" is shaping up, to my mind,
> > is that it most resembles (with is centralized control)
> > some of the alternative visions to the Internet that
> > were being put forward (e.g., by Bell Telephone) in the
> > late 60s and early 70s.
> >
> > -t
> >
> >
> >>
> >> Nate
> >>
> >> On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 7:55 PM, Thomas Lord <lord@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>
> >>> So, sure - he didn't live to see the pervasive
> >>> implications of the Internet per se but a couple
> >>> of things:
> >>>
> >>> 1) He did live long enough to get a taste for what
> >>> computing and networking might bring (by decades)
> >>> hence my fishing for cites. That's why I asked.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> 2) By 1994 (per Mr. McInnerny's comment) *lots* of
> >>> undergrads were using the Internet. Big time.
> >>>
> >>> I do have a distorted lens perspective of coming out of the
> >>> Carnegie Mellon University environment but at least there
> >>> and at quite a few other campuses - Internet access and use was
> >>> fairly ubiquitous almost a decade before that. The web
> >>> didn't quite yet exist although lots of people were trying
> >>> to get it started - but the 'net was in full swing on a bunch
> >>> of campuses.
> >>>
> >>> I appreciate both comments and any cites that might
> >>> crop up. I'm just fishing to see if there's some stuff
> >>> I wasn't aware of in his writings.
> >>>
> >>> -t
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Fri, 2010-05-28 at 07:41 +1000, martin hardie wrote:
> >>>> yes I thought that Mr David
> >>>>
> >>>> But then maybe you have to jump to good old D&G ... eg
> >>>> Postscript on
> >>> control
> >>>> societies to continue the Foucault trail?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On 28 May 2010 07:37, David McInerney <vagabond@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Given when he died I imagine there wasn't much to say.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Back in 1984 people were still getting excited over the new AT
> >>>>> MS-DOS
> >>>>> machines with two 5.25" floppy disks and even in 1987 I was
> >>>>> informed
> >>>>> in hushed tones as a new employee about the amazing 20MB hard
> >>>>> drive
> >>>>> that the big insurance company I worked for had installed and
> >>>>> which
> >>>>> they were hoping to eventually scan and store all of the insurance
> >>>>> policies on! Even in 1994 the internet was a huge deal and only a
> >>>>> few people I knew had access to it, generally academics using
> >>>>> university infrastructure. I didn't know any undergrad
> >>>>> students who
> >>>>> had used it.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Back in 1984 it was people posting modem addresses in magazines
> >>>>> and
> >>>>> communicating one-to-one as far as I can remember.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> So no I wouldn't expect anything in Foucault's work itself, but
> >>>>> I'd
> >>>>> be interested to see what people have done with his work since to
> >>>>> discuss the matter
> >>>>>
> >>>>> D
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On 28/05/2010, at 6:53 AM, Thomas Lord wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> Did Foucault write anything about computing,
> >>>>>> software, networking, and so forth? His mode
> >>>>>> of analysis seems to have a lot of relevance
> >>>>>> to today's Internet but I'm wondering what he
> >>>>>> might have written directly about such technology.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> -t
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>> Foucault-L mailing list
> >>>>>
> >>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>> Foucault-L mailing list
> >>>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> Foucault-L mailing list
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Foucault-L mailing list
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Foucault-L mailing list
>
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list
>
--
Nathaniel Roberts
Visiting Scholar
Department of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
820 Williams Hall, 255 S. 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
USA
Thomas: The extent of your experiences with the internet even in the
mid-eighties are amazing. I was an undergraduate at Berkeley between 1989
and 1994. By the end of my time there I knew lots of people who were using
email, but most of those I knew (myself included) were not among them. On
the other hand, I recall that even in junior high (8th and 9th grade--or
1984-6) we used to connect to the internet through our school's computer
lab. But except among a select pool of cognoscenti (again, I was not among
them) we didn't really know what it was we were connecting to. So I guess
I'm not surprised Foucault would have failed to anticipate the importance of
the web. I wish you luck on your research, and look forward to hearing more
about what you find. It will be especially interesting to think about the
extent to which Foucauldian concepts are useful (or not) to analyzing this
phenomenon.
Regards,
Nate
On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 12:24 AM, David McInerney <vagabond@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I was referring to 1984 & 1994, 1984 as when Foucault died, and 1994
> as a decade later when I was an honours student at Flinders University.
>
> In Australia undergrads generally didn't have access to the internet
> until the late '90s. My first experience of the internet was when I
> started as a doctoral candidate at ANU in 1995. Undergrads there
> were also using it, mainly in student residences.
>
> Which underlines my point: the 'internet' was just servers within
> university campuses, government offices etc for a long time. It was
> only when people started to access it from home that it became a big
> thing.
>
>
> On 05/06/2010, at 1:36 PM, Thomas Lord wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 2010-06-04 at 23:52 -0400, Nathaniel Roberts wrote:
> >> Thomas,
> >>
> >> Please note that Foucault died in 1984, not 1994. McInnerny's
> >> comments
> >> refer to 1984. But you are certainly right that lots of
> >> undergraduates were
> >> using the internet by 1994.
> >
> > Fair enough. As points of curiosity, not arguing....
> >
> > In 1984 I went to Johns Hopkins and got a first taste
> > of using the internet. In 1985 I transferred to
> > Carnegie-Mellon Univiersity and got a much larger taste
> > that involved the entire campus community. By 1987
> > not only had every undergrad been on the net for while
> > but there were controversial studies of online porn and
> > some of us were test subjects for the precursors of
> > what is today DSL. This was a cross-campus phenomenon
> > although not universal at all schools. My earliest
> > experiences go back to around 1983.
> >
> > More importantly, the discourse around building the
> > thing (or something similar) and deploying it for hoi
> > poloi goes back long before that. An interesting
> > aspect of the way "web 2.0" is shaping up, to my mind,
> > is that it most resembles (with is centralized control)
> > some of the alternative visions to the Internet that
> > were being put forward (e.g., by Bell Telephone) in the
> > late 60s and early 70s.
> >
> > -t
> >
> >
> >>
> >> Nate
> >>
> >> On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 7:55 PM, Thomas Lord <lord@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>
> >>> So, sure - he didn't live to see the pervasive
> >>> implications of the Internet per se but a couple
> >>> of things:
> >>>
> >>> 1) He did live long enough to get a taste for what
> >>> computing and networking might bring (by decades)
> >>> hence my fishing for cites. That's why I asked.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> 2) By 1994 (per Mr. McInnerny's comment) *lots* of
> >>> undergrads were using the Internet. Big time.
> >>>
> >>> I do have a distorted lens perspective of coming out of the
> >>> Carnegie Mellon University environment but at least there
> >>> and at quite a few other campuses - Internet access and use was
> >>> fairly ubiquitous almost a decade before that. The web
> >>> didn't quite yet exist although lots of people were trying
> >>> to get it started - but the 'net was in full swing on a bunch
> >>> of campuses.
> >>>
> >>> I appreciate both comments and any cites that might
> >>> crop up. I'm just fishing to see if there's some stuff
> >>> I wasn't aware of in his writings.
> >>>
> >>> -t
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Fri, 2010-05-28 at 07:41 +1000, martin hardie wrote:
> >>>> yes I thought that Mr David
> >>>>
> >>>> But then maybe you have to jump to good old D&G ... eg
> >>>> Postscript on
> >>> control
> >>>> societies to continue the Foucault trail?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On 28 May 2010 07:37, David McInerney <vagabond@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Given when he died I imagine there wasn't much to say.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Back in 1984 people were still getting excited over the new AT
> >>>>> MS-DOS
> >>>>> machines with two 5.25" floppy disks and even in 1987 I was
> >>>>> informed
> >>>>> in hushed tones as a new employee about the amazing 20MB hard
> >>>>> drive
> >>>>> that the big insurance company I worked for had installed and
> >>>>> which
> >>>>> they were hoping to eventually scan and store all of the insurance
> >>>>> policies on! Even in 1994 the internet was a huge deal and only a
> >>>>> few people I knew had access to it, generally academics using
> >>>>> university infrastructure. I didn't know any undergrad
> >>>>> students who
> >>>>> had used it.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Back in 1984 it was people posting modem addresses in magazines
> >>>>> and
> >>>>> communicating one-to-one as far as I can remember.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> So no I wouldn't expect anything in Foucault's work itself, but
> >>>>> I'd
> >>>>> be interested to see what people have done with his work since to
> >>>>> discuss the matter
> >>>>>
> >>>>> D
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On 28/05/2010, at 6:53 AM, Thomas Lord wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> Did Foucault write anything about computing,
> >>>>>> software, networking, and so forth? His mode
> >>>>>> of analysis seems to have a lot of relevance
> >>>>>> to today's Internet but I'm wondering what he
> >>>>>> might have written directly about such technology.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> -t
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>> Foucault-L mailing list
> >>>>>
> >>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>> Foucault-L mailing list
> >>>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> Foucault-L mailing list
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Foucault-L mailing list
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Foucault-L mailing list
>
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list
>
--
Nathaniel Roberts
Visiting Scholar
Department of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
820 Williams Hall, 255 S. 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
USA