Notes

Social media historic usually start with a obligatory recounting of the early days of the internets founding in the 1960's, including the first message sent over the Arpanet in 1969, immortalized in Werner Herzog's documentary lo and behold, reveries of the connected world Herzog, 2016

As you might imagine, bandwidth was exceedingly precious in early years of the online world.

In the academic world, our understanding of the evolving nature of social communications was exponentially increased by the perceptive work of a number of early social media researchers who were attuned to the cultural elements of phenomenon.

Again and again in our historic exploration we will see that the easy-to-use software structures, affordances, and patterns of behavior and communication, which are familiar and institutionalized in contemporary social media, were established many years ago in systems such as Minitel, bildschirmtext, CompuServe, Genie and BBS.

Social media has become an integral part of our lives, connecting us with friends and family and enabling us to share information, ideas, and experiences with people worldwide.

However, social media is not a new phenomenon.


Arguably, it is ancient indeed.