成人论坛

Lucy Hooberman, Professor, Digital Media and Innovation at the University of Warwick, has been documenting the history of the 成人论坛's online presence through a series of oral history interviews. Here Professor Hooberman explores just what being on the internet has meant for the 成人论坛.

This week the 成人论坛 is marking the 20th anniversary of its publicly facing beginnings on the World Wide Web.聽From the launch of the in April 1994 and the appearances of the first publicly available websites this last 20 years has seen the 成人论坛 move from an age of scarcity - two channels only, to an age of abundance.聽Whilst the main push of the 成人论坛鈥檚 technological challenge in the early years of this period was for digital television this post 聽is all about what was achieved 鈥渙nline鈥�.

But it鈥檚 hard enough remembering what the UK was like in let alone the world we lived in (Rwanda, Kurt Cobain). Try asking people what they did at work 20 years ago!

I鈥檓 lucky enough to be working with the 成人论坛 on bringing its ,聽started by , into this era recording interviews with former and current 成人论坛 staff to chart this journey.聽

Recent though it feels it鈥檚 not that easy to reconstruct.聽It鈥檚 been eye-opening how many assumptions of mine have been challenged.聽 First the assumption that in this digital age everything has been kept or is available for the public or for researchers of the future聽has been well and truly squashed.

Even paperwork I thought the 鈥榓rchive鈥� must have kept may or may not be there.聽I joined the 成人论坛 in 1993 and when I joined it was an organisation that thrived on memos.聽I鈥檇 never seen so much paperwork coming down from on high, 'cascading' commandments, directives leading to much filing and the assumption created in me that such an organised system of internal communications would have its mirror in complete and organised archiving. When I started this project it took a long time to find out that much or most of this period is not yet fully archived and whilst everyone was very helpful the only files I could see were about the聽 at the beginning of this period.

At least that was a very good start.聽When it came to looking for some of the early websites too that was a challenge, whilst some sites and designs have been archived and kept findable.聽.

The third area of challenge is, of course, memory. I鈥檝e now had a taste of my own medicine as I鈥檓 being interviewed about a couple of films I produced 聽in the mid 1980s which seem to have found some extremely late fanbase nearly 30 years on having been widely ignored at the time.聽My own archiving as an early Independent Producer sorely tested by moving job, moving house, pre-web days.

I鈥檓 hoping other material may be stored away in personal archives, hard drives, paper prototypes kept lovingly at home like the dusty photo albums of yesteryear. Anybody?聽And if you do have it where should it be kept?

The world of post-tape archive is complex not only for digitisation but choosing. What do you keep personally? Where do you keep it and how do you keep your memory as an organisation alive?

I started to think about this when I moved from television to "new media" in 2000. I came from participatory and access television and missed the contact with audiences of the television of the 1990s. The www brought it all back and I started to . Bloggers - first military bloggers and then 聽Not forgetting the 成人论坛鈥檚 own and found again what I had missed in television since the early 1980s - discussion about the media and how our world was changing by connecting.聽I loved the phrase 鈥渨riting ourselves into existence鈥� and it gave me the push I needed to start working out why the 成人论坛 was not blogging. It took me a few years to get the 成人论坛鈥檚 Journalism board to agree with a little help from a few friends. But that鈥檚 another story for another day...

Lucy Hooberman is Professor, Digital Media & Innovation, WMG University of Warwick.