notes/observations/commentary on cyberactivism

reading this was almost nostalgic. not because of the I was involved in anything sort of grassroots, internet-based, protest. but the atmosphere that was felt around the internet in the 90's. These small pockets of user controlled internet pages had such an amateur feeling to them that we don't see in amateur internet today. maybe because it just wasn't common place at the time. the graphic showing a haunted page (p. 40) gave me a little laugh. I remember when yellow text on a white background was common. Part of this is due to the fact that content wasn't as easy to manipulate like it is today.

another thought involving user license agreements and the intellectual property of its creator. First, people were eventually allowing others to take their creations and use them for a greater good. We now have creative commons licensing (We The Media also addresses the power of open source ideology).

As ugly and aesthetically painful the user-generated content of the the internet was, it really built a foundation that wanted more control and ease. Not just in the sense of their thoughts and ideas, but also the ability to manipulate and format the internet as they see fit. The advent of WYSIWYG editors, wikis, blogs, facebooks, myspaces, flickrs, all created a sort of easy to use and standardized way of presenting concepts and commentary.