When I was a freshman in college, the moments before the very first class of the day always confronted me with a blank chalkboard to look at. Invariably, I could not resist the impulse to write something on the board. This usually consisted of some philosophical question that had entered my mind. As this had nothing to do with the subject of the class, it was typically ignored by my classmates, though it often put a puzzled expression on the professor's face.Where did my impulse come from? Is it the same motivation that led me to create an internet presence? Does that mean I share it with other bloggers and Facebook "friends"? In a recent sociological experiment, Xiaoquan Zhang and Feng Zhu inquired into the nature of incentives that drive the Open Source movement, where the monetary incentives that are implicit in patent and copyright protected work are removed. Their findings indicated a corollary between the size of the possible audiences and the desire to contribute to wiki projects....
The very first forums for discussion, for sharing ideas, may have been our ancestors conversing around a campfire. The very first message board that we know of might have been the walls of a cave in Chauvet, France . We don't know what the intention of that pre- written language art was for. We do know that block printing, centuries before Gutenberg created the movable type press, created posters that announced public events. We know that community institutions often created bulletin boards of some type to share and pool messages about common interests. Newspapers had letters to the editor, and sold advertising to finance publication. These advertising pages soon prompted the "personals", which allowed the readership to solicit sales for personal property, attention of prospective suitors, and possible homes for unwanted kittens.
Let's skip ahead to 1926 and a German emigre named Hugo Gernsback. Hugo was in the magazine business, publishing Modern Electrics & The Electrical Experimenter. He also started Amazing Stories , publishing the works of H.G. Wells & Jules Verne, as well as solicited pieces by new writers of what he termed "Scienti-fiction". Hugo also did something very important for science fiction of the time: he published letters from the readers, complete with addresses. Today, this concept of privacy intrusion might be viewed askance, as marketing research had been invented in the 1900's. But, this also gave readers their only method to reach out to one another. The result would be the creation of the "fanzine", which was a metaphysical concept; a magazine by and for fans, about the fans' subject . There would also be fanzines for movies and celebrities, jazz and popular music, comic books... Many of these were originally available by subscription only, and published by amateur means.
Science Fiction fandom also gave us the first SF convention in 1939, introducing many concepts I will discuss in future blogs. For this article, tho, the point is that a central message nexus provided the information to gather in physical locations.
Let's skip ahead a few decades more... The introduction of ARPANET in 1968 established the protocols by which computer to computer communications would be conducted. By the mid 1980s, with public access to the internet, along came CompuServe, Prodigy, and other dial-up online services. HTML and the World Wide Web is introduced in 1989, and the first web browser in 1993... During this time period, the people using the internet were mostly either college students ( a demographic I intend to blog about, later) or scientists. Forum sites for discussions were either work related, or about shared interests, and were very crude in appearance.
Skip ahead again, to 1999-2000, and the general public's introduction to e-mail and forums. At this time, the importance of "internet presence" was first becoming an issue for commerce, and for personal use. Yahoo!, the first profitable search engine, was adding monetary value by advertising, providing e-mail addresses, news, and server space for group web sites. Microsoft introduced it's MSN pages, doing much the same thing. Many web sites, either commercial or personal, often found that viewers desired a method to share commentary on content or interact with the creators. Some websites, such as Delphi, simply provided space to host other websites, and provided means to create forums.
Soon, the forums (sometimes referred to as Message Boards) became more sophisticated. The creation of forum managers to provide editorial control, as well as a "velvet rope" point of access control over exclusive membership of forums. Many added the ability to not only post messages, but allowed the forum members to augment their posts via HTML or BBC code, allowing changed fonts and colors, adding images, & separating quoted passages.
The major things that became clear about forums : a message "thread" about a particular topic could generate a discussion as long as the forum members wanted, could include as many forum members as wanted to participate, could lie dormant for stretches of time until a member revived it, and could generate digressions over minute details (or personal disputes, called "flaming"). Message threads could be "derailed" by "trolls", who delighted in rude behavior for various motives.
One particular early forum, 4Chan, was so notorious for it's disputes and abuses by and of message posters, that it composed a set of rules about internet usage..
The Message Board thread also became a place that stimulated debate, and excelled at criticism. If you made a statement that was questionable, hyperlinks allowed you to cite sources. If a response was an ad hominem attack, you could "pwn" your attacker with a "LOL catz" image. As a general rule, debating without knowledge of the subject was socially unacceptable.
Another frowned upon practice was "sock puppetry", where an alternate identity is created to appear as a separate, supportive entity on a message thread. Accusations of this practice being committed happens when a poster's support seems too good to be true..
By 2008, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social network sites utilized "status updates", or "tweets" on a "wall", which was another form of message board. Originally confined to written content, these walls became more sophisticated as well...
Let's compare mediums..
You have AM radio, with it's broadcasting quick, low content messages. It's conducive to the "sound bite" response, and not to long, thought out messages and response. Further, criticism and rebuttal during discussion is limited, at best. By it's nature , it is widely accessible to listeners, but has a limited number of callers. False statements cannot be easily questioned.
Then, you have the message board, which limits participation to invited members of a group. It is easily contributed to by any interested member, can continue for as long as there is interest by members & moderator. It is conducive to formal debate, so long as the social matrix of collaborators abide by manners established by mutual consent. Statements can be authenticated. Further, a certain level of technological access (the Digital Divide) is required for participation, meaning a monetary, educational and social status level is involved.
Which is best?
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