Aika Matemu resides in Nairobi, an African city known for being the hub of technological innovation and design. In an interview she conducted with Acumen as a fellow, an organization dedicated to the way the world tackles poverty, she explained her passion for using technology to facilitate social change, movement, and revolution. She is currently…
the Evolution of Social Media
Social apps’ general concept is to bring people together to communicate about interests, topics, and other issues. (Like Tiktok, Ins) As technology has advanced since the days of The Well and eWorld, the world has evolved towards a global network with millions of people communicating through various social platforms and media. The users of these…
Tasha Lutfi – Womxn in Design
Tasha Lutfi is an advocate for diversity in design, speaker, and designer with over 20 years of experience in the industry. She is also a 16-year tenure at Microsoft. Tasha Lutfi graduated from Indiana University Bloomington in 2000, double majoring in BFA Graphic design and BA Telecommunications. Tasha then joined Hubbard One working as a…
Mariam Braimah-a bridge between Nigeria and Silicon Valley
Mariam Braimah is the Lead Product Designer at Netflix and founder of the Kimoyo Fellowship, a design program that connects designers to leading tech industry professionals across the African diaspora. Braimah was born and raised in New York and moved to San Francisco after college when she decided to be a UI/UX designer. When she…
Meg Withgott
Meg Withgott, co-founder of Panafold, is known for her role in the company as Chief Technology Officer. Meg Withgott received a degree in Cognitive Science at Stanford University in 1984, and proceeded to found the company A Day to Think in 2007. A Day to Think was a nonprofit organization dedicated to seeing projects succeed….
The Evolution of Online Community
“Information on the WELL was not merely an object of exchange, but a representation of its creator’s consciousness.” The early concept of an online community opens up a space for the internet not just as a tool, but also as an extension of people’s offline connection. Nowadays the social apps hold way more than as…
Lucy Suchman: More than a Green Button
Lucy Suchman is a professor of anthropology at Lancaster University, who worked as the principal scientist and manager at the Palo Alto Research Center. Her university education was completed at UC Berkeley, receiving her Ph.D in Social/Cultural Anthropology in 1984. Cambridge University Press published her dissertation, Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication…
Ellen Lupton
Bored in 1963, Ellen Lupton presents herself as a curator of Contemporary Art. In 1981, Lupton became a fine art student at Cooper Union in 1981 and discovered the expressive potential of typography. “Design really wasn’t in the mainstream back then. It was esoteric. It was the thing you did if you were very ‘neat,’ which…
Shigeru Ban
Shigeru Ban is a Japanese architect. He is known for his innovative work with paper, particularly recycled cardboard tubes used to quickly and efficiently house disaster victims. He was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1957. Ban’s early life was surrounded by carpentry. His mother, a fashion designer, regularly enlarged the house to accommodate her seamstresses;…
Hideo Kojima – video gaming’s first auteur
90% of what is considered impossible is, in fact, possible. The other 10% will become possible with the passage of time & technology. —Hideo Hojima Hideo Kojima was born on August 24, 1963. He spent his childhood in Setagaya Ward, Tokyo, and moved to Kansai with his family when he was a child. Because his…
Build a Technical System for Human Interactions
In the early days of developing social experiences of communities was aimed to build a technical system for virtual human interaction. In other words, people want to establish relationships and social environments virtually through technology. As we can see today, we spend a huge amount of time on maintaining and expanding our social networks through…
Gatekeeping not limited anymore
Comparing early Bulletin Board Systems to the communications tools we use today, we still use text as forms of communication, as in emails, text messages, Slack, social media, etc. Although, with advancements in hypertext—HTML/CSS and Javascript—we are able to form it more visually–hierarchical, use of images and videos. Additionally, with smartphones, we are now able…
Current Communication Styles
The Whole Earth Lectronic Link was a community that ran on forums and group communication practices. The founding concepts of communication has stayed the same. Text, Organization, and Imagery is key when discussing a topic. Present day examples of communication like zoom and discord both utilize text and imagery, but incorporate new ways of interacting…
The early generation of social applications
In today’s age when the Internet is developed, it is difficult to imagine what the first generation of electronic technology socialization was like. According to the article, I realized that in 1985, some people’s demand for remote social networks started to rise. This played a decisive role in women’s status at that time. There are…
Humans are not Nodes and Links
In consideration of early forms of social networking, a common theme that emerges is that of self-regulatory systems. Particularly in the case of WELL, several of the seven design goals established by the team include fostering an environment that is “an open-ended universe”, “self-governing”, and “a self-designing experiment”. By doing so, technology becomes both a…
Virtual Community
With the development of technology, 4g even 5g appeared and make the data upload speed much faster than before, which has pushed the development of Live broadcast and short video platforms. In this way, the ability to live-stream made people can get feedback at the same time and in a more intuitive way. So all…
The Early Internet
The WELL, the name itself, even sounds very utopian to me. Indeed, it was the new beginning of the internet and the birth of the virtual community. What I find fascinating is that the similarities between the Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design and today’s social media. All of these eight rules are so profound…
