New York City Civic Culture from "The Friendly Club" in the Eighteenth Century to Netnews Today By Michael Hauben The birth of intellectual thought in New York City during the eighteenth century mirrored the intellectual ferment of the time in Edinburgh and London. Thomas Bender in New York Intellect (Alfred A. Knopf Inc, New York, 1987) describes this intellectual climate as a civic culture. Prior to the development of such an active culture, America needed to develop a critical mass of people. As residential density is greater in the city, the city had the potential to be more intellectually exciting than the country. However, during the first half of the eighteenth century thoughtful people in American cities still felt isolated. This isolation came about from the lack of the ability to communicate and discuss ideas with others. It is hard to be able to improve upon one's thoughts if there is no outside commentary or criti- cism. Also, the best ideas often come about from the meshing and interaction of two or more minds. The mixing of different sources usually lead to new and robust creations. New Yorkers felt isolated as they knew they were on the periphery of the world, far away from the cultural centers of Europe. However, these people sought to develop a community which would welcome the discussion and creation of ideas. Civic Culture describes a possible city life in which public life and intellectual life merge and overlap, rather than when these lifestyles are lived by two sets of different people. In London, people would often meet in coffeehouses to get together in order to exchange and discuss ideas. These discussions were different from past intellectual exchanges by being secular in nature and taking on, at times, very defined forms. The essay provided a way of both thinking about a topic and writing it down in a concrete form. (p.10) The essay provided thoughtful material to discuss upon meeting other people. Bender writes that this culture in New York developed "a distinctive metropolitan charac- ter by the conjunction of literary and practical affairs." (p.10) During the time of the birth of this new American intellec- tual culture, colleges existed, but were different from today's academic institutions. American colleges in the eighteenth century existed as traditional centers of denominational reli- gious education. An important figure in the beginning of New York City's intellectual life was William Livingston. Livingston graduated from Yale as part of a first generation of non-ministe- rial college graduates. (p.17) Livingston and colleagues met together in New York City in a group which Livingston described to a friend as a "Society for Improving Themselves in Useful Knowledge." (p.17) This was just one of many burgeoning social civic societies. These societies represented a life which was not possible in the country. Gradually, the purpose of these societ- ies evolved from the social to the intellectual. Participants became interested in further increasing their knowledge of the world and of ideas. By 1754, two general institutions were formed which would help to spread this intellectual milieu throughout the city. The New York Society Library was opened to help promote "a spirit of inquiry among the people." (p.18) As such, it was intended to help any individual who would be interested in expanding his or her mind. In addition to providing access to books, the Library was to function as a museum and a research institute. (p.18) Kings College, later renamed Columbia College, was also formed to make advanced intellectual study a possibility for New Yorkers. The social circles in the community continued to grow and encour- age intellectual association. A prominent example was "The Friendly Club" formed in 1793. These circles started concentrat- ing on the discussion and criticism of literature. This discus- sion often took place in the form of conversation at weekly meetings. The participants likened these meetings as their connection to the growing "republic of intellect." (p.31) Today's intellectual activity differs in that much of it relies on printed publications rather than on on-going conversations. Some involved in these weekly societies would note with disdain that others tended to have less time for concentrating on the discussion because of their growing interest in commerce. This seemed to pave the way for the development in New York City of what Bender calls a literary culture, and later the academic culture. Both represent the narrowing of who would consider themselves part of the intellectual culture of the times. Whereas the businessmen, lawyers and mechanics among others would partic- ipate in the civic culture, writers and others made up the literary milieu. Lastly, the University represents the total separation of intellectual study from any other profession. Bender notes this as the academicization of knowledge. He con- cludes his book by calling for the liberation of knowledge and intellectual thought from the privileged University into the democratic mass of the general city. The civic culture of the eighteenth century has re-emerged in the late twentieth century in the form of discussion groups facilitated by the interconnection of computers and computer networks. Computer facilitated communications take the form of Netnews, mailing lists and real-time discussion groups in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) or conferences. Bender described some of the intellectual activity pursued by the eighteenth century societies as "the gathering of information and its distribu- tion." (p.32) The most important of the new developments I listed above, Netnews, technically does just that. Usenet News, an older name for Netnews, was created to provide an automated and cost- effective way of distributing information between early Unix computer sites. This allows for people to contribute some infor- mation in the form of a post or article, and have the system distribute it to the next Usenet site up the stream. The next site continues the distribution and so on until the article has gone around the world. Local newsgroups which discuss New York City and its environs include nyc.general, nyc.announce and nyc.seminar, which is used to announced seminars, meetings and other such "societies." Other similarities abound. Bender wrote how intellectual life in the eighteenth century was founded on conversation. (p.39) He then contrasted that with today's reliance on books and journals as a means for intellectual life. Usenet News removes the boundary between conversation and the structured form of the printed word. A contribution to Netnews is in the form of a post. A post is a message contributed to any one or combination of newsgroups or subject areas of discussion. A person's post is either a reply to a previous post, or the beginning of a new thread of discussion. In either case, a person's contribution can include a short or longer reply written in a conversational style, or it can be a more structured answer as in the form of an essay, pamphlet, or paper. The Usenet "Post" thus bridges the gap between the conversations of the eighteenth century and the publications of the twentieth century. In New York Intellect, Bender discussed how growing concern about people's money making efforts helped lead to the professionalization of intellectual thinking. This concern about one's profession meant some people spent less time outside of work trying to expand their mind. (p.120) This is a very contem- porary issue with the computer networks. The physical connection of multiple computers and networks, often called the "Net", was originally developed and funded through public monies. The future of who will run the Net is currently in question. However, one thing which ties in with this is the culture of the Net. It has developed as a culture of sharing, where people contribute to the greater whole. This culture of sharing was facilitated by the fact that there were no charges to connect to Usenet or the ARPANET outside of the normal operational costs and a possibly a local phone call. If profit would begin to run the Net, sharing might not continue to be a part of the picture. Users might come to understand the Net as a service which they demand certain outcomes from, and not as a community to both gain from and contribute to at the same time. The concept of a Civic intellectual Culture is a very interesting idea. It describes a progressive way of gathering people in today's society and cities together to help solve the problems which seem to plague today's cities. Today's technolo- gies provide a way to realize civic culture. Only through the facilitation of uncentralized discussion based on peoples varying schedules and commitments can such a conversation actually take place. To make civic culture feasible, connections into the computer networks need to be made easily available. It is impos- sible to assume that everyone should have a computer to hook into the conversation. As such, the placement of public terminals into community centers and libraries would be a possible solution. And for those who do have personal computers and modems in their homes, a local bank of phone numbers should be available to facilitate the conversation. Thomas Bender foresaw the need to move intellectual discussions out from the University into the broader community, and today's technology has started this process. In order to improve our future, we need to spread access to the general public to make the discussion on the Net fully democratic in form and availability. A New York Freenet(1) would help make this vision a reality. END-NOTES: (1) Freenet is an experimental community computer networking program. The first freenet was opened in Cleveland with support from Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Public Hospital. The Cleveland Freenet is open and available for free to all Cleveland residents (and anyone willing to call a Cleveland phone number or with access to the Internet). It provides the capability of communicating with local governmental officials, other freenet users, and e-mail users around the world. In addition, access is given to many international Netnews news- groups. Freenets have started to be established across the USA and the world.