The [[Bibliotheca Anonoma]] is a Github [[Gollum]]-based wiki designed to collect, document, and safeguard the products and history of internet culture; which constitutes the shared experience of mankind on a network that defines our lives.
We are creating a Library of Alexandria for the internet, collecting and cultivating information that would have otherwise been lost to the sands of time.
Click on the links in the sidebar to the right -> to check them out. Under each section, you can click More... for an even larger list and longer descriptions that could not fit on the sidebar.
We need your help and contribution to succeed. Create a Github account to edit this wiki. Then check out the [[Current Projects]] or [[Teams]] section if you'd like to start somewhere.
The word "culture" holds a connotation of high culture; whatever the winners write in the history books, the artwork in museums that few contemporaries enjoyed, or the literary achievements of an elite literate few.
But many forget that culture also means the products, the influences, the memes that spring from interaction between any human to another. This interaction could occur on the street, in an organization, through mass media or pop culture, or through smaller subcultures.
Whether present-day or contemporary society considers such culture moral or immoral, out of fashion or in with the times is utterly irrelevant. Once recorded, that culture gives us a rare insight into the common thoughts, behaviors, and traditions of the people of that era; and for that reason alone it is worth saving.
Today we live in an era where the internet has become more than a tool of humanity; it is an alternate reality where most of humanity's interaction and livelihoods take place, and thus influence the physical world.
Despite this, the important legacy of internet culture is constantly overlooked as a passing fad by both their constituents and their creators. As the network evolves, new servers will supersede the old, inactive data will fall down the memory hole, and link rot shall destroy cultural context. And it won't be long before a future innovator, (probably your own self) sifting through humanity's library of knowledge, curses us for our complacency.
But why wait to become an internet archeologist? We can instead record history and cultural output as it happens, and analyze them from the perspective of a primary source.
This is why we have taken up the struggle, however fierce, however unloved or hated, to archive and analyze the history and the products of internet culture. One that I hope you too will be a part of.
Welcome to the Bibliotheca Anonoma.
Internet subcultures have created communities resembling nation-states (many manifesting in websites); with rich traditions, storied history, administration issues, struggles with immigration and emigration, even peaceful and "violent" conflicts. Even more amazingly, internet subcultures evolve drastically within a matter of months, and can rise and fall in just a few years. Each subculture strongly influences any successor, as the given that most users are the same people. Thus, even the littlest events can become pivotal in the future through the Butterfly Effect.
Thus, the internet no longer merely collects ideas and cultural output, it's subcultures are initiating projects, concepts and events that have real world implications. Silicon Valley's Hacker Mentality (Google, Apple, Facebook), the Free/Libre Open Source Software Movement (creating Linux, Apache, Firefox, Android), internet memes, the modding community, Anonymous, the Arab Spring, all prove that internet history strongly affects the human condition in the Information Age.