![Sample our Communication Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, 2013 & 2014 volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5927/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Information-Science2.jpg"})
Abstract
The famous Dutch media theorist and net activist Geert Lovink stood at the crossroads of several players and stages of cyberculture in the 90s, trying to assemble a disparate crowd of media activists and media artists, programmers, designers, cultural producers and researchers. In this interview he looks back at his involvement in Mediamatic magazine from 1989 till 1994, the co-creation of the community access network De Digitale Stad Amsterdam,which started in 1994 as a freenet initiative in Amsterdam and the nettime email list in 1995. He also discusses the spirit of the 90s decade and the role of counter-cultural movements in the genesis and development of digital cultures.
Notes
1 I would like to sincerely thank Gerben Zaagsma and Sarah Cooper (University of Luxembourg) for their help during this transcription and of course Geert Lovink for this generous interview.
2 For a more complete biography: http://networkcultures.org/geert/biography/.
3 Facebook Liberation Army Link List (12 April 2018). Compiled and edited by Geert Lovink & Patricia de Vries (Institute of Network Cultures), Wired. https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2018/04/facebook-liberation-army-link-list-april-12-2018/
5 See http://www.nettime.org
6 Turner F. (2006), From Counterculture to Cyberculture. Stewart Brand, the whole earth network, and the rise of digital utopianism, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.
8 A Dutch countercultural movement founded in May 1965 and followed by the hippie movement.
9 https://hart.amsterdam/nl/page/33469/1989-the-galactic-hacker-party. The Galactic Hacker Party was the first public international hacker convention in Europe.
10 To learn more about these events and the history of DDS see Nevejan, C. and Badenoch, A. (2014), How Amsterdam invented the internet: European networks of significance, 1980–1999. In Alberts, G. & Oldenziel, R. (Eds.), Hacking Europe: From Computer Cultures to Demoscenes. London: Springer, pp. 179–205.
11 The Foundation for the Advancement of Illegal Knowledge was established in Amsterdam in 1983. See http://thing.desk.nl/bilwet/adilkno/TheMediaArchive/.
12 Adilkno (1994), Cracking the Movement: Squatting beyond the media, Automedia. http://thing.desk.nl/bilwet/Cracking/contents.html.
13 This paper magazine, which discussed media, art and television, was published from 1985 to 1999. All issues are available at https://www.mediamatic.net/en/page/10342/mediamatic-magazine.
14 Lovink, G. (2018), “The Story of my First Laptop: the Toshiba DynaBook”, blog by Geert Lovink, http://networkcultures.org/geert/2018/01/15/the-story-of-my-first-laptop-the-toshiba-dynabook/.
15 ARKZIN was a periodical published in Zagreb from 1991 to 1998.
16 One of the first ISPs in the Netherlands. Founded in 1993 as an offshoot of the hackers club Hack-Tic, it first offered dial-in services via modem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XS4ALL.
17 The Next 5 Minutes conference took place in Paradiso from 8 January to 10 January 1993 with the aim of exploring and discussing the role of independent media in networks and societies.