(2 of 2)
The influence of the networkers already extends to the outside world--as Diane Worthington, on-line manager of the popular PARTI section of the Source, can testify. When Worthington was charged with involvement in a San Francisco LSD operation, arrested and held without bail, her electronic admirers sprang to her defense. Planning their strategy in nationwide PARTI conferences, they sent telegrams to the judge, and are now raising money for Worthington's legal defense. In Colorado Springs, David Hughes, alerting fellow networkers to a proposed zoning-code change that would have made it more difficult for them to work at home, stirred up so much opposition to the measure that it was modified to suit their needs by the city planning commission.
Celebrities of this new breed have one thing in common: they all write effectively. "Networking is catnip for people who communicate best by the written word," says Art Kleiner, a Berkeley, Calif., writer who runs conferences on CompuServe and EIES. In the world of computer networks, he says, "Good writers have charisma, mediocre writers improve, pushy or insensitive writers get ignored."
In sheer volume of words, Mike Greenly is far ahead of the pack. He started his career as a computer journalist by sending in breathless behind-the-scenes reports from major trade gatherings like Comdex and the Consumer Electronics Show. Spurred by instant feedback from other networkers, he broadened the scope of his reporting to cover the national political conventions last year and the presidential Inauguration last January, where he posed as a correspondent for a fictitious news service. In May he started a series of interviews with people touched by the AIDS panic, taking his readers into hospitals, bathhouses and bordellos.
Last week Greenly was reporting from Washington on the first meeting of the Electronic Networking Association, a trade group chartered last spring to "promote electronic networking in ways that enrich individuals, enhance organizations and build global communities." Some of the 180 participants were employees of firms like Citibank and AT&T that have built networks for their own internal use. Many were products of the counterculture and Me generations who now seek fulfillment in networking. "The business is just rife with spiritual odd fellows," says Stewart Brand. "They've found something that really does expand their consciousness."
A case in point: Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz, two programmers from Lake Oswego, Ore., have created a slot on Turoff's EIES network devoted to a meditation process they call attunement. When a caller types + ATTUNE and presses the RETURN key, a series of messages selected to calm the spirit and quiet the mind scroll up the screen. "Close your eyes, pause quietly for a few moments and be here now," read the final instructions. "Press RETURN when you feel attuned." --By Philip Elmer-DeWitt. Reported by Robert C. Wurmstedt/Denver