@heaven
"[Kim Hastreiter is] the coolest person in New York."
—The New York Timesabout the bookabout
1994, northern California. The Internet is just emerging from its origins in the military and university research labs. Groups of idealistic technologists, recognizing its potential as a tool for liberation and solidarity, are working feverishly to build the network.
In the early chat rooms of one such gathering, soon-to-become-famous as The WELL, a Stanford futurist named Tom Mandel creates a new conference. In a topic headed "Local Bug Report" he asks for advice from fellow online participants about how he might shake off a persistent hacking cough. A few weeks into the conversation it emerges that Mandel's illness is something serious. Within six months he is dead.
This astonishing and deeply moving book is an edited version of the exchanges that took place on The WELL in the months leading up to the death of Mandel. It traces the way an innocuous health topic morphed into a dramatic chronicle of terminal illness and the complicated and emotional issues that surrounded it. A cast of articulate and savvy participants offer their advice and love to Mandel, supporting both him and each other as the trauma unfolds. At the center of their back-and-forth is Mandel himself, in a voice that is irascible, intelligent, never sentimental, and, above all, determined to stay in the conversation to the end.
With an introduction by Paper editor Kim Hastreiter, who followed the exchanges on The WELL as they happened and was so moved that she printed and filed away a copy, @heaven opens a window onto the way the Internet functioned in its earliest days. In contrast to the trolling and take-downs of today’s online discourse, this electronic chronicle of a death foretold reminds us of the values of kinship and community that the Internet’s early pioneers tried to instill in a system that went on to take over the world.
“@heaven recalls a time when the net was about people, ideas, compassion, and everything that made us human. It is both an accurate portrait of the online world as it once was, and a profound call to retrieve this desire for a genuinely connected future.”
—Douglas Rushkoff
About The Author / Editor
Preview
From Kim Hastreiter's introduction to @heaven
In the early 1990s I began hearing buzz about something called The WELL, an experimental bulletin-board-slash-"virtual community" run out of northern California that attracted many of the early radical Internet pioneers as participants. I registered, logged on and immediately became hooked. The WELL offered its small and vibrant online community many diverse forums that evoked strong opinions, maverick ideas and intense conversations on quite a variety of alternative, cultural, intellectual, political and even everyday subjects. As a member, you could scan the categories - from books to sustainability to technology - enter any of the ongoing topics that piqued your interest and join into these conversations or just "lurk" if you didn't feel like speaking up. As a newbie, I was timid among all these super-brainy geeks so I began lurking big-time, avidly following many topics that interested me and soaking it up like a sponge.
in the media
Related Interest
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@heaven
"[Kim Hastreiter is] the coolest person in New York."
—The New York Timesabout the bookabout
1994, northern California. The Internet is just emerging from its origins in the military and university research labs. Groups of idealistic technologists, recognizing its potential as a tool for liberation and solidarity, are working feverishly to build the network.
In the early chat rooms of one such gathering, soon-to-become-famous as The WELL, a Stanford futurist named Tom Mandel creates a new conference. In a topic headed "Local Bug Report" he asks for advice from fellow online participants about how he might shake off a persistent hacking cough. A few weeks into the conversation it emerges that Mandel's illness is something serious. Within six months he is dead.
This astonishing and deeply moving book is an edited version of the exchanges that took place on The WELL in the months leading up to the death of Mandel. It traces the way an innocuous health topic morphed into a dramatic chronicle of terminal illness and the complicated and emotional issues that surrounded it. A cast of articulate and savvy participants offer their advice and love to Mandel, supporting both him and each other as the trauma unfolds. At the center of their back-and-forth is Mandel himself, in a voice that is irascible, intelligent, never sentimental, and, above all, determined to stay in the conversation to the end.
With an introduction by Paper editor Kim Hastreiter, who followed the exchanges on The WELL as they happened and was so moved that she printed and filed away a copy, @heaven opens a window onto the way the Internet functioned in its earliest days. In contrast to the trolling and take-downs of today’s online discourse, this electronic chronicle of a death foretold reminds us of the values of kinship and community that the Internet’s early pioneers tried to instill in a system that went on to take over the world.
“@heaven recalls a time when the net was about people, ideas, compassion, and everything that made us human. It is both an accurate portrait of the online world as it once was, and a profound call to retrieve this desire for a genuinely connected future.”
—Douglas Rushkoff
About The Author / Editor
Preview
From Kim Hastreiter's introduction to @heaven
In the early 1990s I began hearing buzz about something called The WELL, an experimental bulletin-board-slash-"virtual community" run out of northern California that attracted many of the early radical Internet pioneers as participants. I registered, logged on and immediately became hooked. The WELL offered its small and vibrant online community many diverse forums that evoked strong opinions, maverick ideas and intense conversations on quite a variety of alternative, cultural, intellectual, political and even everyday subjects. As a member, you could scan the categories - from books to sustainability to technology - enter any of the ongoing topics that piqued your interest and join into these conversations or just "lurk" if you didn't feel like speaking up. As a newbie, I was timid among all these super-brainy geeks so I began lurking big-time, avidly following many topics that interested me and soaking it up like a sponge.