Fourteen years ago this month Infocult was born.
It was an oozy birth, combining unwholesome ichor and illicit code. It transpired somewhere dark, under ancient tombs lined with flickering screens. Stories were muttered when Infocult heaved itself into life, tales of fear and the forbidden.
It's instructive, or at least of historical interest, to gaze upon the blog's first entries in August 2003, back in the days of the second Bush presidency's first term. So many links have perished under link rot's blight. Doomed technologies appear, like Friendster.
Dennis Kucinich runs for president. People lead flashmobs before smartphones. SCO was a big deal. So was RSS.
The United States had just invaded Iraq:
Yet we can see stable 21st century themes already in play: gaming as storytelling, the problem of spam, copyright battles, information literacy, worries about the open .
Infocult's major theme - the ways we fear the digital world - is there, but quietly. Our secondary them - Gothic horror in everyday life - is not. Infocult is an alien newborn, still clawing its way out of the bloodied host, casting about for prey.
Which it would find.
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