Site©2009-10
Site undergoing reconstruction, hence scaffolding. Service as usual.
Clear City Press was founded on May Day 2009. The design of the first book was partly inspired by early City Lights Books, hence the City, with ideas from French pocket formats. ‘Clear’ was chosen because it resonates to some extent with the Claremont location of the press. The word Press first identified coin minting procedures, then described the central process machine of the Gutenberg print revolution. This era, which increasingly ensnared text into corporate financial cultures, is weakened and I think ending. If so its end was already heralded by forms like cinema, radio, TV, amateur photography and now the computer.
The Social Network film, has indirectly stirred interest in the old hippie communalist days. In the 1980s Stewart Brand uploaded the contents of the Whole Earth Catalogue. The book’s vast array of techniques for communalism, and its lists of contacts, had already helped underpin the burgeoning hippy commune movement from 1968 onwards. (I had a copy once, but our anarchist beatnik scene really needed it in 1961-2, when we were into spontaneous urban outlaw communes in London)
The Whole Earth Catalogue when uploaded transformed into the Well (Whole Earth ‘lectronic Link) It is still going and being feted as the first social network. By the time Facebook arrived there were already 1000s, perhaps tens of 1000s of internet communities in all shapes and forms. Gutenburg Project and Wikipedia are two of the most well known, though the degree of open-ness varied and it depends on what you mean by communal. The old chat sites in UNIX in the 80s and 90s enabled sharing of interests and dating and were often not moderated, except by communal uproar. I was in one of these at 911 with several New Yorkers active, including a superb scholar who lived in Manhattan. The stated purpose of the group was to discuss the Arthurian legends but it also facilitated dating, friendships and of course verbal support at 911.
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