Steuer made a conscious decision to use the entrepreneurial culture of dot-com-era San Francisco to accomplish his goal of spreading the gospel of “networked, local community.” Steuer and Cool envisioned a multi-sited community: an online bulletin board, a hosting platform for personal publishing, and a cyber café that would teach classes and serve as a meeting place for like-minded web devotees. To this end, they wrote up a business plan, incorporated as Cyborganic Corporation, and sought funding. … Jenny Cool wrote the first Cyborganic manifesto in 1995, which concluded, “We must use [new technologies] to serve our own ends, not as ends in themselves, and we must work together to build a future we want, in our imaginations and in our lives.” The founders of Cyb-organic recognized that although internet technologies had immense potential, they were not intrinsically positive. Instead, improving community and connection required hard work.

Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, loc. 132