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Posts Tagged “

Stewart Brand

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geeks gone wild

Users of early online community The Well party like it's 1989

Computing pioneer and author Howard Rheingold has jumped on the buzzword bandwagon with a vlog, and the two most recent entries are a peek back into the pre-Web days when "geek" was still a term of scorn. Possibly because of some astounding fashion choices — Rheingold's taste in vibrant colors and eye-splitting patterns pictured here seem to have influenced Marissa Mayer's taste in couture. That said, as an early BBS dialer myself, I find this footage of a party at the Sausalito offices of The Well in 1989 fascinating. For a list of the people in the videos, the comment thread on BoingBoing's post gives the details. Watch and learn, you kids, after the jump. More »

8:20 AM on Tue May 6 2008
By Jackson West
635 views, 5 comments

Latest by BobDope: Where's Billy Idol? He had his Well e-mail address printed on the cover of his seminal work 'Cyberpunk'. more »

your privacy is an illusion

Wiretap-happy feds have nothing on your paranoid, office-spying boss

The Valley's secretive culture sprang up from its Pentagon contracts and the cult of intellectual property. Acolytes of Whole Earth Catalog publisher Stewart Brand may remember his assertion that information wants to be free while dropping their annual 2CB on the playa — but it's far more rarely acknowledged that he prefaced that aphorism with the maxim that information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. And what's the most valuable information you can have? Information you can use against someone. While bosses are tasty game for a hungry underling, it's far easier for management to hunt their minions, since they have the keys to the Exchange server and outbound HTTP request logs. Having been logged, filtered and background-checked on Google at more than a few well-known local heavyweights myself, I present at least five ways you're being watched not by the NSA, but by the local, private sector — especially the paranoid executives at Apple. More »

Feature

9:00 AM on Mon Apr 21 2008
By Jackson West
1,423 views, 3 comments

Latest by Michael Arrington: @BobDope: Amateur. I do hookers and blow on my MacBook. And you were wondering why it was so messy. more »