<nettime-ann> "Geeks in Cyberspace" - my new documentary about the histo

Dear friends and colleagues,

I am very happy to announce the release of “Geeks in Cyberspace,” a 30-ish minute documentary that tells the story of the people who created Slashdot and other innovative community websites in the late 1990s. It touches on themes of creativity, the mix of motivations that went into creating these sites, the subtle differences with later social media, and the link between community feelings of ownership and continued maintenance and preservation.

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deefSs5Qxz0.

What started as a lo-fi attempt to capture 1 or 2 oral histories became a more ambitious and pro-am effort that has its flaws, but I am ultimately quite proud of. I hope it will be of use to interested researchers, professionals and perhaps in courses about social media and digital culture. If you do want to show it in the classroom, please note there will also be an accompanying article on opensource.com, but somehow the timing got messed up and it’s not up yet.

I’m interested in doing more documentary work in the future, so any thoughts, feedback or ideas about collaboration are very welcome.

And of course if you would like to share it with colleagues you think would be interested or via your social media channels, I’d be grateful.

Thanks!

-Michael

Michael Stevenson

Associate Professor

Media Studies

University of Amsterdam

[email protected]

http://twitter.com/_mstevenson

Publications: https://hcommons.org/members/mstevenson/