SociAlchemy.com
Title
SociAlchemy - Transformative Networked Interaction
Description
In 1986 I began six years of managing the startup online community called the Whole Earth Lectronic Link, better known as The WELL. It was a social experiment taking place within a technical experiment. There were no maps and few advisors. Our small staff invited our paying customers to join us in a collaborative effort to insure its financial survival. In the process, we learned a Ph.D.'s worth of knowledge about the effects of digital communication on human interaction.
The WELL was a private, subscription-based community, but it was also a fishbowl because we invited journalists and influential technologists to become complimentary members. We wanted the WELL to be known, and we wanted to hear what people thought about a community of smart people meeting in cyberspace. The WELL demonstrated to them and to us that words on a screen can carry knowledge and emotion as well as information. We learned that trust is an important gateway to knowledge sharing, and that relationships are the key to a community's longevity.
Since I left the WELL in 1992, the Internet has blossomed and the Web has made it the vast universe that it is today. Technology now provides capabilities that were barely imaginable, and one doesn't have to be an early adopter to connect to the Web through a PC more powerful than the computer that supported all of the WELL's active users. But in the social realm, not much is new. People are people, and the main difference in their behavior online depends on whether or not they are anonymous or participating under their true identities.
Languages
English
