iably, the software applications developed by this community
stressed communication over mere data retrieval. They were egalitarian
in design. IRC chats and USENET groups, for example, present every
contributor's postings in the same universal ASCII text. The internet
was a text-only medium and its user was as likely to be typing into
the keyboard as reading what was on screen. It is as if the internet's
early developers released that this was not a medium for broadcasting
by a few but for the expression of the many.

People became the content, a shift that had implications not just for
the online community but for society as a whole. The notion of a group
of people working together for a shared goal rather than financial
self-interest was quite startling to Westerners whose lives had been
organised around the single purpose of making money and achieving
personal security. The internet was considered sexy simply because
young people took an interest in it. People who developed internet
applications in this way were called cyberpunks or hackers, and their
antics were often equated with those of Wild West outlaws, hippies,
Situationists and even communists.

But their organisation model was much more complex and potentially
far-reaching than those of their countercultural predecessors. Many of
these early technology and media pioneers would not have considered
themselves to be part of a counterculture at all. Indeed, many new
models for networked behaviour and collaborative engagement were
developed at research facilities dedicated to the advancement of
military technology. A US government policy requiring all firms
working under Defense Department contracts to test their employees'
blood and urine for illegal drug use led to a certain disconnection
between most Silicon Valley firms and the majority of the fledgling
computer counterculture. (In fact, of all the Silicon Valley firms,
only Sun computing quite conspicuously refused to do drug testing on
its employees.)

Whatever the applications envisioned for the communication technology
being developed, the operating principles of the finished networking
solutions, as well as the style of collaboration required to create
them, offered up a new cultural narrative based in collective
self-determination.

Online communities sprung up seemingly from nowhere. On the West Coast
in the late 1980s one of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, Stewart Brand
(now co-founder of the prest