The Catalog was introduced in the 1960s as a magazine-type medium where people could view and review products, but not actually purchase them through the catalog. Turner explains the catalog as the first experience of social networking as "it offered a venue in which members of multiple geographically dispersed groups could communicate with one another". By the 1980s, the framework of the Catalog was put online in the appearance of WELL. According to Turner, "WELL became a forum within which information exchange, community building and economic activity took place simultaneously". Although similar to the Catalog, WELL was more efficient because of its instantaneous structure and because it was always available.
While reading this article, I could not help but compare WELL to Facebook, as I'm sure most people did. Although WELL and Facebook have different purposes and objectives for their users, they are both places where people can completely lose themselves in the online activity of posting information and using instant messaging. The two sites are also similar in that they both use their information as a commodity for production, which Facebook has recently jumped into with their sponsored stories.
However, forums such as Whole Earth Catalog and WELL began as ways for people to partake in counterculture, such as the New Communalists in the 1960s, who wanted to "return to a more emotionally authentic and community-based way of life". By participating in these forums, they went against what they saw as the mainstream bureaucratic lifestyles of America as they called for change.
Yet, isn't Facebook, which you could argue is based off of the Catalog and the WELL, one of the most mainstream aspects of our current society? Over 500 million people around the world are active users on Facebook, with the terms 'chatting' and 'liking' taking on whole new meanings because of it. As one blogger suggests, he is participating in counterculture by not becoming addicted to Facebook.
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