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The following article is from the Review Section of the New
York Times of Sunday 26 August l990.
It is headed:
PROGRAMMED FOR LIFE AND DEATH, written by John Markoff.
This spring a California man symbolically took his life by
using a computer program to seek out and destroy the
contributions he had made over to the years to a continuing
electronic conversation run by a computer group called the
Well. Several weeks later, he followed this "virtual"
suicide by killing himself in the real world.
Blair Newman had been one of the most active members of the
Well, a five-year-old electronic community that is operated
out of the Whole Earth Review, a publisher in Sausalito,
Calif., with roots in the l960's counterculture. Several
thousand people in the Bay Area regularly call up the Well
for an electronics typewritten chat, and they frequently meet
face to face in more conventional gatherings.
Mr Newman, a 43-year-old veteran of the personal computer
industry, was such an enthusiastic-- some would say
obsessive--user of the Well that many of his friends knew
him only electronically. They describe him as a flamboyant
insomniac who could be counted on for stimulating and sometime
infuriating late-night conversation. But he was also known
for bouts of depression.
After his simulated suicide in May, many members of the
community dispatched angry messages complaining that they
had been wronged. Some believed Mr Newman's writing, stored
on a computer disk, were the property of the community and
not his to destroy.
It was after this dispute that Mr Newman took his life.
"For him to be done in the virtual world was to be done--
period," said John Perry Barlow, a participant in the group
who is a lyricist for the Grateful Dead.
Some may take Mr Newman's story as that of a disturbed
computer addict who used technology to withdraw from the
world. But others see the experience in a different light, as
a glimpse of a future in which computers change the way
people live and work, and ultimately the way they die.
In recent years computer networks have been emerging as a new
kind of community unlimited by geography. While members can
be spread across the world, the ease of communication can
engender an intimacy more akin to a small 19th-century
village than a 20th-century suburb.
Some sociologists see a dark side to all this.
"There is a notion of avoiding the her-and-now society," said
Todd Gitlin, a sociologist at the University of California at
Berkley."Part of what's scary is that there is a blankness in
her-and-now society that leads people to prefer these virtual
communities."
But others see the networks as a way to overcome the forced
anonymity of modern life. While the telephone shrank the
world by permitting instantaneous one-to-one contact, and
while radio and television have served as a one-way medium to
broadcast information to millions, the computer has become a
vehicle that allows hundreds of people of like values and
interests to come together in small groups.
Much of what has taken place was foreshadowed in a number of
science fiction novels written in the last 15 years. In his
1981 novel "True Names" -- which has a small but devoted
following among network enthusiasts--Vernor Vinge describes a
fictional world in which a small computer underground
illicitly occupies parts of a powerful global network. In the
story, technology has become so advanced that it is possible
to simulate highly realistic fantasy worlds and move about
and interact with people who may be located thousands of
miles away.
A computer-science graduate student has recently created a
less elaborate simulated universe called Tinymud, which
exists within a nationwide computer network called Internet.
A program permits dozens of people connected to the network
through personal computers or work stations to create
simulated personas and use them to explore a fantasy world
that the players themselves recreate.
Similasr to role-playing games lke Dungeons & Dragons, the
game lacks the dazzling graphics associated with Mr Vinge's
story. Tinymud's universe consists entirely of written
descriptions, and wandering through it is like reading a
novel-- or like being a character in one. And in a meta-
fictional twist, each player can also play author, adding
new regions for other players to explore.
In recent months the game has become a fad on college
campuses. By signing on to the network, one can travel
through an interactive text filled with details of the
geography of the Boston area, or electronically visit the
Yale University campus.
In addition to shrinking distances and stretching
imaginations, computer networks also provide anonymity. Such
an environment can lead to behavior that would not be readily
tolerated in real life. Recently, in a posting on a computer
network, a Wesleyan University student complained about
sexual harassment in the Tinymud game.
"Just because my character is female and has a vaguely
attractive description, and just because I choose to flirt
with some people, some jerk thinks my sexuality is public
property," the student wrote. (It is not known whether the
character's creator was male or female.)
Some day electronic communities could be futuristic, high-tech
paradises. But for now they function more as primitive
societies, still groping for social codes.
Mr Barlow, the lyricist, said he once believed that computer
conferences would never become real communities until they
could address sex and death in ritual terms.
"Marriages and funerals are the binding ceremonies in real
towns," he said, "but they have a hard time happening
among the disembodied.
In the case of Mr Newman, his friends have tried to assuage
their grief what may be the first electronic funeral.
Shortly after his death, they created a new computer file
including all of his old writings, which it turns out, had
been saved on a backup disk. They have also compiled a
eulogy, hundreds of pages of testimonials available on the
system. Included is this observation from Mitchell D. Kapor
the founder of the Lotus Development Corporation and now
chairman of On Technology.
"He was a unique character, and perhaps the limitations of
space and time were just too much for someone with so many
ideas and inspirations."
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