The Virtual Community

In the last six months the British media has suddenly woken up to the Net, running features about online systems and the Internet as if they were something new. Tabloid and television coverage has invariably been centred around 'child porn exposé/shock/horror/outrage', but then we all know what journalists spend most of their time thinking about. Besides, it is not really in the interests of monopolised media to be sympathetic towards an unregulated network that provides in-depth, instant access to eyewitness reports of world events, as well as direct communication with people in a great number of different fields who actually know what they are talking about. Worse still, it's free. So, expect more of the same 'danger to the public - must be regulated now' type editorial until further notice.

The other stereotypical scenario that bothers mainstream media at the moment is the prospect of 'Data Superhighways' that will allow instant video and music access (a.k.a. purchase) and online shopping. Given Britain's abysmal record in telecommunications infrastructure - you do know that all the dialling codes are changing again this spring don't you? - and the minor problems of competing standards and protocols for virtually every aspect of data communication and hardware, this may happen a lot later than they think. Indeed, the January issue of Wired magazine ran a 'Reality Check' in which four industry gurus were asked to give a timetable for the arrival of interactive TV: the earliest date was 2000, followed closely by 2003, while the other half felt it would never arrive. Perhaps this provides a clue to Rupert Murdoch's recent acquisition of the relatively small (c.100,000 subscribers) US online/Internet access service Delphi - to aim for the already computer-literate rather than the domestic consumer. I mean, half the population still have trouble operating the video remote control...

In the wake of this speculation, and partly fired by Bill Clinton's vice-Presidential appointment of a long-term NREN (National Education and Research Network) campaigner, there is currently an overload of Net books and magazine articles floating around that are aimed, in the most part it seems, at people who feel a desperate need to know what is going on but are somehow outside it. Howard Rheingold's The Virtual Community is by far the most informative, not least for the reason that it is a predominantly personal account, gathered over an eight year period, of the various facets, flavours and incarnations of computer networks. Rheingold, in a chatty writing style of short, contained sentences derived from a decade of Net postings, covers the development of the Internet from the early US Department of Defense sponsored ARPANET to its current incarnation, and looks in detail at Net-connected online services and BBSs around the world: San Francisco's WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), Britain's CIX, Japan's TWICS and Minitel in France. This provides a thorough grounding in the variety of flavours computer networks have come to provide. Some of the more controversial phenomena specific to the Internet - IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) - receive chapters of their own, as do the more abstract, though equally pressing, problems of privacy and control of Internet resources by commercial and governmental concerns.

But perhaps it is time for a potted technical aside: the big mummy of all networks, the Internet, is a loose conglomeration of approximately 10,000 computer networks spanning the globe and connected by a variety of means. Virtually every major university, corporation, and US scientific or military installation is represented, and since last Summer, the White House and Congress have had e-mail addresses too. Many of the hundreds of independent and commercial dial-up services and BBSs throughout the world have gateways to the Internet and the last year has seen public access increase dramatically. The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, and more recently frieze are all contactable via the Internet and undoubtedly other publications and media will follow suit. Armed with a half-decent computer, a modem and Internet access through an inexpensive commercial service such as CIX or Demon in the UK, you too can have access to the Government of the United States of America, NASA, every major computer and software manufacturer, and any seat of learning worth shaking a digit at. You will also be in contact with the millions of people on the Internet in the more informal atmosphere of Usenet, a broad spectrum of discussion conferences categorised by interest from the highly technical (comp.graphics.research) to the recreational (rec.crafts.quilting) to the bizarre (alt.sex/fetish.diapers). On the other hand, talk is cheap and not everyone is interested in knowing the opinions of poorly travelled, poorly informed American computer science undergraduates on every subject under the sun -- but such is the price of democracy.

One of the most intriguing things about the Internet is the protracted, organism-like development from its origins in the 70s as a method of providing the military with nuclear-strike proof data communications to an almost Utopian vehicle for social change. Through his descriptions of key players in the development of the Net, Rheingold makes clear the fact that its ideological leanings are strongly rooted in a 60s ethos of individual empowerment. Examples are given of successful instances in the UK, America and Japan where local communities and individuals have been given the ability to enrich both their personal and communal lives and take an active role in the process of democracy through computer networking. On the flip-side, however, this directness and freedom of exchange is often antithetical to certain governments: Japan banned the use of modems until 1985 and public Internet access is still severely limited, while right-wing Singapore is currently debating whether the country should allow its proposed domestic high-bandwidth communication network to be connected to the outside world at all.

Despite the utopian nature of much of the theoretical debate around the Internet and its future, Rheingold has an unusually firm grip on reality. As equally aware of the pitfalls as the advantages of unlimited freedom of communication, his window onto the networld is populated by real people in a variety of countries and from all walks of life, many of whom he has actually met in the flesh and come across as anything other than virtual citizens. If ever there was an example of the positive application of technology towards human needs, then this open, global perspective is it.