We have a pretty robust history of different kinds of communities that have been built around these different communication media, and we can use those to think more clearly about how we want to build community online in the future. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us.

I'm your host, Paris Marks.

Just a couple quick notes before we get into this week's episode.

First of all, by the time you hear this, Tech Won't Save Us will have passed one million total downloads since the show started,

which is an incredible milestone to reach. Thank you so much for listening to the show.

Second of all, I will be in Europe later this month and in early September, and I'll be doing

some events while I'm on the road.

August 26th, I'll be doing an event in Berlin to promote my book Road to Nowhere that came out

recently. Once there's a link for that, I'll include it in the show notes so you can check that out.

I may also be doing events in Amsterdam and London, so stay tuned for information on those

if I'm able to finalize those dates.

And if you are in Europe and want to get in touch, feel free to do that.

My schedule will be a bit full, but maybe I'll be able to fit some things in.

This week, my guest is Kevin Driscoll.

Kevin is the author of The Modem World, a prehistory of social media,

and an associate professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of the modem world, a prehistory of social media, and an associate professor in the

Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. Kevin was last on the show in May of 2021.

That's episode 60, if you want to go back and listen to it, where we talked about the Minutel

system, this network that existed in France that was built by the state and that had this really kind of vibrant

online community at a time before the internet really took off in the United States.

And that provided us some really interesting ways to think about the internet and to think about

how networking existed before the internet and how there are continuities and also how things

...