wash. post

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

CYBERSPACE: ON THE EDGE OF AN OLD FRONTIER
by Joel Garreau, Washington Post Staff Writer
The Washington Post
Wednesday, May 26, 1993
"Style" Section
Pages B1,B9
 
Call it a barn-raising -- on the electronic frontier.
 
Mike Godwin, 36, moved to washington last Tuesday from Cambridge,
Mass. On Thursday, he got the call from Mayflower Moving and
Storage. The truck carrying all his stuff had caught fire in
Delaware. Ninety percent of it was destroyed.
 
Godwin was devastated. Not only was he uprooted, but nearly
everything  in his life was gone. His furniture. His books -- many
signed. The bound copies of the college newspaper he edited that he
wanted to show to his little girl someday. Photographs of his dead
father from the '50s. Even his spare set of glasses.
 
He did the profoundly human thing. He turned to his community and
wailed in anguish.
 
Godwin's community, however, is out of the ordinary. It exists in
cyberspace -- the electronic universe where human interactions occur
via computer. In an age when people bemoan the dehumanizing,
isolating effect of technology, the response to Godwin's plight
demonstrates a new kind of family.
 
Godwin is a civil-liberties lawyer with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a computer user advocacy group created by software
magnate Mitch Kapor, the developer of Lotus 1-2-3. So in his moment
of pain, Godwin reached for  family -- a keyboard. "I'm devastated.
It is almost impossible to grasp how much is gone," he typed onto a
network called the WELL (for Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), where he
has made many friends with his comments and observations over the
years. "There was much that is irreplaceable."
 
And Godwin's electronic community -- Many of whom he has never met
face to face -- came through.
 
Within minutes, the condolence traffic started flowing into Godwin's
Macintosh at work: "Good God, Mike, unimaginable"; "A real
sick-to-the-stomach feeling -- who among us is ready for that kind
of ugly surprise," the message read.
 
A little more than an hour later, at Message 13, the tone of the
conversation shifted to the practical. "I bet if you post a list of
the irreplaceable books, some of us just might mail you our own
copies," wrote Elliot Fabric of San Francisco.
 
And that's how the cyberspace barn-raising began to take shape.
 
"I don't have any of the books you lost, except Shakespeare, but
I'll give you a lipstick-autographed copy of "Susie Sexpert" if it
makes you feel better," one person wrote. "Don't worry about the
[A.S.] Byatt books. They will be my gift to you," posted another.
 
Indeed, many of the lost books Godwin mentioned turned out to be by
the authors who regularly check into the WELL's conversation
channels, including Bruce Sterling, Katie Hafner and John Markoff,
making those replacements even easier.
 
By Friday afternoon, around Message 57, the community's conversation
took another turn -- towards the ineffable. "I wish it were possible
to send those irreplaceable things, family photos and such. Would
you like one of Sofia's drawings?" asked one person, referring to
the work of his little girl.
 
"What a neat offer." another correspondent, Gail Ann Williams,
appended. "When a friend of mine was burned out, we had a 'something
old' party and everyone brought a gift with stories. Old peace
buttons and Beatles records and books and art and baseball cards....
We gave her some of our own childhood treasures, with their stories,
to take as her own. It was good. When you tell us what you've lost,
we may have some curious parallel replacement items after all. I'll
go through my memorable-things collections."
 
In the meantime, practical advice was accumulating. Find a food
processing plant and immediately freeze any water-damaged books that
might be salvaged. This halts rot and prepares for drying later.
Others offered strategies to recover the true value of the loss. One
guy even offered to lend him $1,000, Godwin says.
 
He was overwhelmed. "It really was a barn-raising," he says. "Like
when a family was burned out a hundred years ago."
 
Godwin, a graduate of the University of Texas law school, hardly
views himself as a nerd with a pocket protector in his shirt. He
originally got involved with this world of computer bulletin boards
-- where users can post messages molded in electrons -- by writing
to strangers on his computer in the late '80s. One thing led to
another, and he started offering on-line legal advice, and "the
electronic community has been my primary community  for a number of
years now." When disaster struck, "I went to the people that I'm
closest to."
 
This is not unusual anymore -- millions of computer users share
their lives in cyberspace, discussing via modem every topic
imaginable. "People post [messages] about marriages, births,
break-ups and all sorts of major life changing events here," Carrie
Lynne Phyliky-Lay responded yesterday on the WELL. "We talk about
how we live and how we wished we lived. I suppose it's a whole new
forum for those same basic human impulses we all have to share but,
on line, it is done in words on a computer screen."
 
Tina Loney, who hosts a series of WELL discussions about parenting,
the WELL, pointed to one long-standing exchange that the concerns
the leukemia contracted by one writer's son. Another exchange is
about an adult who has recently undergone a bone marrow transplant.
"Neither of these is a 'barn-raiser' -- although there has been
actual help proffered and accepted," Loney wrote on the WELL
yesterday in response to a query about electronic community. "But
both are replete with warmth and caring and support. There are
dozens more examples."
 
Referring to year-long exchange about a man with brain cancer, Loney
wrote: "If you can read the last few postings without crying,
you're stronger than most I know."
 
"This is not without precedent," Godwin mused. "Many human
relationships in the 19th century were rich, and built on letters.
You can view all on-line forms as an out-growth of the epistolary
tradition."
 
The WELL, based in Sausalito, Calif., was established by Whole Earth
Catalog founder Stewart Brand in 1985 and has 8,000 members on it's
network.
 
To be sure, few of the users view it as a replacement for
face-to-face contact. "There is a lot you can offer [electronically]
in terms of verbal encouragement, but the real nitty-gritty of
getting to know and/or help people happens in real time in the
flesh," wrote Phyliky-Lay.
 
Said Andrew Alden, another WELL respondent: "This is how life should
be. Modern American life is the aberration, where people who return
dropped wallets are lauded in editorials and sent marriage
proposals.
 
"So if this is a frontier, it's one on the edge of the old true
ways, not a new one."