The Session #123: All along the information superhighway

The topic for The Session #123 is Cyberbrew – Is the Internet Helping or Hurting Craft Beer?

That’s a pretty easy question to answer. But I’ll leave it to Steve Hindy in The Craft Beer Revolution.

The internet has arguably been the greatest ally of the craft beer revolution. Daniel Bradford, the former marketing director of the Association of Brewers (AOB), and now publisher of All About Beer magazine, recalls surveying Zymurgy readers in 1986.

“I sent out a survey to try to figure out, other than homebrewing, what books did I have—how could I talk to these people, how can I find more people like them to read Zymurgy,” he said. “And other than [that the overwhelming majority were] white, middle-aged guys, twenty-five to forty-five [the sruvey showed] almost 100 percent had a personal computer. This is in the eighties . . . . The home-brew revolution was simultaneous with the personal computer revolution, and I’m convinced it continues to this day with all these bloggers and social media.”

Host Josh Weikert expects more of an answer (for instance to questions like, “How are beer reviews affecting what gets brewed and drank?”) so head to his blog to read more responses.

Or if you want to take it very seriously read this. You’ll need a beer by the time you finish get halfway through.

The internet doesn’t coddle you in a comforting information bubble. It imprisons you in an information cell and closes the walls in on you by a few microns every day. It works with your friends and the major media on the outside to make a study of your worst suspicions about the world and the society you live in. Then it finds the living embodiments of these fears and turns them into your cell mates. And good heavens it is efficient.

Myself, I’m simply going to provide a year, a “Halt and Catch Fire” moment, and let you fill in the beer blanks. As in, “1982, Bert Grant opened Yakima Brewing and Malting Company.” Now I’m going for a walk. I won’t be checking my phone.

1971 – Email
1977 – PC Modem
1978 – Bulletin Board System
1979 – Usenet
1982 – Commodore computer
1985 – Virtual communities
1991 – First web page created
1993 – Mosaic, 1st graphical browser (the photo at the top was taken in 1993)

2003 – My Space
2004 – Facebook
2006 – Twitter
2010 – Instagram
2011 – Snapchat