Cyberia TechnoCultures 90s – Internet Big Bang with Eva Pascoe and Jon Bains
Mid 90s history of Technocultures, with people who made Internet happen – in this Episode One, Cyberia Cafe co-founder Eva Pascoe and Jon Bains from Obsolete, chat about their journey from Clubland to Tech.
From punk fanzines to music websites, impact of Southern Records and John Loder, London clubland from Heaven and Megatripolis nexus with Martin Kavanagh Virtuali-Tea, Shamen and Sean Clark, to connections to US clubs via ISDN, collabs with ICA and Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner), Talvin Singh and Anokha, multicultural counterculture was in the early Internet DNA. Virtual Nightclub from Phillips and Olaf Wendt with Eva’s cameo get a mention as does the first Levi’s Web campaign with the first animations.
Politics – Kill The Bill protest from 1994 against Criminalisation of Raves, politics of post Thatcher years, cyber-feminism with Laura Jordan Bambach.
Entrepreneurial beginnings- inspired by Tomato and Antirom, Jon has set up Obsolte and later Lateral, creating successful ad and Internet companies with the first collaborative tools to manage early remote work.
We dive into diversity at our early tech teams and large number of women in early Internet companies. Emergence of new cybercafes like Backspace, James Stevens and the role of local, physical venues in spreading love, art and peace ideology of the early Internet. Debate about censorship, regulations battles and also the future of VR versus AR.
Eva Pascoe – with David Rowe, Gene and Keith Teare cofounders of the world’s first Internet Cafe Cyberia, later the first Ecom Director of FTSE100 for Topshop, tech investor, business coach, on Advisory Board for Shopify and Open Source advocate.
@evapascoe www.evapascoe.com co-founder of cybersalon.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Pascoe Jon Bains – legendary pioneer of Internet Advertising, co-founder of Obsolete and Lateral Web Agencies, son of a feminist American mother, brought up in Scotland, Jon has dropped out of Edinburgh Uni computer science and came down to London to stir things up and invent New Media. Process and systems thinker, uber geek with a passion for digital privacy, Jon was instrumental in Cybersalon campaign for Bill of Digital Rights, influencing GDPR framework in Europe (2014-2020).
