Book details of 'The Well: A Story of Love, Death & Real Life in the Seminal Online Community'

Title	The Well: A Story of Love, Death & Real Life in the Seminal Online Community
Author(s)	Katie Hafner
ISBN	0786708468
Language	English
Published	April 2001
Publisher	Carroll & Graf Publishers

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Reviewer amazon.com wrote:
The term "online community" has been sucked dry of meaning in recent years, but there was a time when it connoted exciting possibilities and radical change. One early experiment, the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), united smart, independent, left-leaning folks from all over as early as 1984, and still lives and breathes 17 years later. Journalist and long-time member Katie Hafner tells the story of its early days in The Well: A Story of Love, Death and Real Life in the Seminal Online Community. Though the title isn't strictly accurate--there were comparatively primitive online communities long before 1984--the tale is well told and compelling. Started by visionary Stewart Brand and do-gooder Larry Brilliant, the dialup BBS offered a wide-open space for communication, developing relationships, and, inevitably, conflicts. Spicing up her story with excerpts from online posts, interviews with participants, and sometimes sordid details of WELL-being, Hafner shows that not all online communities are the same. Though the WELL's social and business problems are legion--eventually it was bought by Salon.com--the participants and administrators consistently showed intelligence and determination, essential qualities for homesteading pioneers. Though the book can't begin to address big questions about virtual social environments (Do they help or hinder users' lives? Are they as deeply satisfying as traditional relationships? What makes them so popular?), it does help the reader begin to address them personally. That individual determination, aided by discussion with others, is the WELL's greatest legacy.
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Book description:

The Well was conceived during the Orwellian year of 1984, yet instead of heralding Big Brother, it became a boundary-breaking cultural invention that helped change our world. Though few glimpsed its potential, it quickly became indispensable to the evolution of the Internet as we know it today. Its creators were Larry Brilliant, a visionary software engineer and philanthropic doctor, and Stewart Brand, Sixties legend and originator of The Whole Earth Catalog. They imagined a new kind of community, one whose members would meet in everyday space, as ideal communities always have, while also inhabiting a new kind of environment, the virtual ether of a world that hadn't even yet been named. By the end of the 1980s, the pioneering community founded by Brilliant and Brand was attracting thousands of early adopters, from former commune-dwellers to students to technologists to businesspeople to fans of the Grateful Dead, all participating in online conferences with other Well-beings (as they called themselves) on myriad topics. This fascinating anecdotal history unfolds their story. It is filled with memorable personalities and their early electronic postings, which are quoted as they were originally transmitted, as it analyzes the many reasons for the Well's legendary success, from its beginnings less than two decades ago up to the present day, including its recent purchase by salon.com.