Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I think instead of anyone attemping to write a book about the WELL we
should just capitalize on what already exists. 

What's a new, hardcover best seller going for today, $18? $23? 
Suppose we sell $20 read only accounts  -- access to all confernces
without posting rights. These "book" owners could construct the book
themselves by reading as many topics as they wish, forming the book
through their own self filters and in their own mind.  Could be big
money maker and keep the fees down for the rest of us. 
  

    
Katie, did you get any sense from people of the extent to which
technology shaped the culture of the Well? I suspect the constraints of
picospan dictated somewhat how people interacted -- perhaps in ways
that are impossible to recreate now in a web interface.
  

    
The hyphens changed the place for a while, but then they drop the
hyphens and get lost in the crowd.  
  

    
To extend what Mike asked, Katie, how strong were the feelings and
memories of the WELL users you interviewed about the effects of the
*lack* of good technology of the WELL. People either adapted to
Picospan or they didn't. But the unreliable performance of the system,
it seems to me, would have been a real test. Having been in the office,
we experienced one side of the frustration. But had I been a paying
customer or a habitual host, I'm sure I would have felt differently.

I have claimed on occasion that had I not worked there, I would not
have been a WELL subscriber. It wouldn't even have been on my radar.
And if it had, one exposure to the VAX's 10-second character echo (the
time between striking the key and seeing the character appear on your
screen after being "echoed" back to you by the VAX) would have sent me
packing. The only thing that tempered my surprise that so many people
stuck with the business was my experience at the Farm where there were
NO conveniences and people continued to live there for years.
  

    
Email from Patrizia:

Viz Fig's <98>:  
   "The WELL will come back, like bellbottoms. Uh, no. But I
    don't doubt that relationships initiated and maintained over 
    years through online conversation will become more prevalent 
    as people become more comfortable with the medium and with 
    the images the construct around their virtual communities."

At this point, in this culture, online relationships are a fact of life.
Virtual friendships flourish in a wide variety of cyber-mediums.  Even AOL
has its interesting corners.  Very frequently they spill over into
real-time life, no willing suspension of disbelief required.  But people
who meet via AOL don't necessarily keep the AOL referral (if you will) as
the focus of subsequent friendship.  My experience may not have been
typical and of course, I'm not a member now but I do remember a great many
offline conversations with Well friends revolving around who posted what,
when and with which subtext so that the online interaction seemed to
define them. Not necessarily a bad thing -- Kiwanis Club members probably
do the same -- but it does argue for the fact that the Well is more of a
club than a freefloating web of relationships initiated and maintained
over the years.

Why not turn that into a selling point?  Assuming that there's some
benefit to the survival of the Well as an institution, rather than as a
nexus of freefall interactions. I'm thinking marketing here

I don't think the Well will come back, like bellbottoms.  More like that
very rare c 1960's Mary Poppins pez dispenser.  Bellbottoms are a top-down
fad.  Pez dispensers are loved and cherished by the discriminating few.
  

    
The people who have posted here who are in the book include Cliff,
Gail, Marye, David Gans and others I'm sure I missed. I'm sure Tom
would post if he were here!

And yes, the technology played a huge role in shaping the culture of
the Well, imho. Picospan was by its nature a hurdle to getting on the
Well (boswell has disagreed with  me on this point, I think, but I do
believe that for the technically uninitiated, it was intimidating).
Come to think of it, I have quite a bit in the book about how PicoSpan
shaped the Well culture.
  

    
So you do. And about the Sequent & the Vax, and even the Engaged
interface. But I'm surprised that Sweeper didn't get a mention. It made
a HUGE difference to those of us logging in via CPN.

Ah well, just another instance of "can't cover everything", I'm sure.
  

    
And since Thaisa mentioned it, here's a list of the bookstore
appearances coming up. The f2f element would be nice:

1. This Friday evening (June 8) at 7:30 p.m. at Readers' Books (a
great little store) in Sonoma. Address: 127 East Napa St.  (on the
plaza)

2. Monday, June 11 at 12:30 p.m. at Stacey's downtown S.F. (581 Market
St.)

3. July 11, 7:30 p.m. at Book Passage (51 Tamal Vista Blvd) in Corte
Madera.
  

    
Cliff, the hobbled technology certainly did seem to stick in people's
memories. But people also seemed proud that they stuck it out when
things got really slow. Stewart once told me that that was one of the
reasons he backed way off the Well -- because the technology was so
unreliable. I forget whether that made it into the book. I'll go check.
But yes, it was certainly a big factor for a lot of people.

Then again, if you're accustomed to nothing *but* ten-second character
echoes, why be unhappy? I remember having a PC Jr. and a 300 baud
modem circa 1984 and thinking that was just the nature of the game...
  

    
I remember him commenting that the reliability of the service was
unacceptable.  "From a business standpoint" was at least implied.
  

    

>Picospan was by its nature a hurdle to getting on the Well (boswell has dis-
>agreed with  me on this point, I think, but I do believe that for the tech-
>nically uninitiated, it was intimidating).

It is also true, however, that some people got computers and modems just so
they could get online and participate here.  So if Picospan was a hurdle, it
was also a worthy tool.
  

    

I may very well be the only person who came to the WELL, not realizing
that there was a community here in which I could participate.  I was just
looking for a news feed and someone suggested I sign up here - kind of
like these days when you might just be searching for an ISP when you move
into a new neighborhood.  So I would log on and type "rn" at an OK prompt
and that would be the extent of my participation.  Then, one day, the MOTD
said something about a WOP in something called news.  WTF? I thought and
went to check it out.  Went to the WOP and my entire life changed.

But the lag to get on was horrifying.  When I first signed up, my bio said
something about how I was from LA and how much my then-husband liked the
Dodgers.  Then, on subsequent logins,( after I discovered how much
people from the Bay Area disliked people from LA, and how here the
Dodgers had a first name:  "Hated") there'd be a several minute delay 
between typing in my login ID and typing in my password and I'd think,
"They don't want me here.  I knew I shouldn't have mentioned the
Dodgers!" 
  

    
!!!
  

    
That also needs to go in the next book.
  

    
Cliff, when Louis Jaffe and I offered Picospan to Stewart, we also
told him NOT to go with Vax. (we were running ps in Colorado well
before the Well.) Told him it would support less than half what was
advertised. We were right - and you and Wellites had to suffer.

Picospan, in my opinion, was a greater asset than liability. Its very
difficulty in being mastered meant that only those who really wanted
to participate did so. Lots of trivia and trivial posters stopped
trying. (I have a hunch the easier the interface, the more trivial the
talk). It also kept the total number of users (when compared with
Compuserve, for example) limited. Bad for the Well as a business, good
for the Well as a kind of community. Big city, small city.

The smaller scale also meant that those who owned/ran the Well were
part of the dialogues. By the time Katz got here it was we-they,
customers and company.
  

    

>Picospan, in my opinion, was a greater asset than liability. Its very dif-
>ficulty in being mastered meant that only those who really wanted to par-
>ticipate did so.

yes.
  

    <scribbled by tnf Thu 7 Jun 01 15:44>
  

    

>By the time Katz got here it was we-they, customers and company.

Katz made it so.
  

    

That's right.  He actively resisted our earnest attempts to integrate him
into the community, and even when he showed up at events, he remained
aloof.  Polite, pleasant enough, but definitely apart.
  

    
Yes, but it had also shifted from being a pretend-business (trying to
make more money than it spent) to a profit and loss business. Changed
the atmosphere and relationships. And yes, because those who run
tight business ships are not always like those who lived on The Farm.
  

    

Picospan can't be that hard if Mr. Point and Click (me) could learn
enough to do the basic stuff on it.  There is of course much more I
don't know how to do than do with it, but posting, reading mail, etc.
wasn't too difficult to learn.
  

    

Wait a doggone second!  The Farmsters "pretend business" was
consistently in the black,  although we/they had a hard time coming up
with cash to improve the infrastructure.  
  

    
 Picospan isn't hard to learn, but it does require some effort, which is
enough to drive many people away.
  

    
If difficulty of posting made the Well a community, then there should
have been a dropoff in community correlated with the introduction of
Engaged.
  

    
It cam be argued that there was a decline in the quality of participation
with the introduction of Engaged.