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å Wednesday, December 2nd, 2015

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% Yauheniya Chuyashova completed

In chapter 5 “Virtuality and Community on the WELL” Turner argues that Stewart Brand “lay down boundary conditions for a self-governing system”.

In this chapter, Turner talks about WELL (Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link). It was one of the most influential computer network, founded by Stewart Brand in 1985. The WELL was a “teleconferencing system within which subscribers could dial up a central computer and type messages to one another in either asynchronous or real-time conversation”. So basically it is similar what we use now in our every day routine on the Internet. Stewart Brand was serving to place boundary conditions for a self-governing system, “he was working to establish a forum in which individuals could express themselves and form an alternative community of kindred souls”. He assumed a self-governing system, which worked by been comprehensive. He thought that it would be great if people could share and discuss any type of information with one another and communicate a soon as they wanted too. At the end users had control of almost everything.

The Whole Earth Catalog became a model for WELL. WELL was more comfortable than Whole Earth Catalog which was published only a few times a year. And access to the information was much more easier that from Whole Earth Catalog. Participants or members of WELL were journalist and hacking community. “WELL became the place to exchange the information and build the social network on which their employment depended”.

Later on users had to pay money to be able to participate. Stewart Brand was worried that if WELL cost nothing than the rap dominators would be able to take over, so he invested a subscription fee. “As a result, he decided to charge users eight dollar subscription fee and two dollars per hour to log in – far less than the twenty five dollars per hour of use that other systems were charging at the time. Subscription was a model of pay for free seeing information that really worked. At that rate people could forget they were WELL members and not be stricken when they noticed their bill six months later. Often it would revive their interest in getting their money’s worth”.

 

 

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% Janelle Figueroa completed

The Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link, also known as the WELL, was created by Larry Brillant and Stewart Brand as a way of continuing and expanding on the ideas of the Whole Earth Catalog. The WELL was to be “a teleconferencing system within which subscribers could dial up a central computer and type messages to one another in either asynchronous or real-time conversations” (141). This system was seen as way to bring the countercultural idea of shared consciousness online.

When it was created Brand did not want to post all the sections of his Whole Earth Catalog because he wanted subscribers to be able to make their own topics of conversation; they were free to write what they wanted. Members are able to create their own topics and create their own conversations as they pleased. The subscription rate was a lot lower than most of their competitors only because Brand wanted others to be able to share a relationship on the WELL. He wanted members to gain a true experience of communicating with others and sharing ideas rather than it being a quick rapid post.

The WELL team had comprised seven design goals of the system, the most important one being that it was self-governing. An example of them putting this goal into action was the features of erasing posts of another member from the screen that a user doesn’t like or being able to go back and delete a post of their own that they didn’t want available to the eyes of other members. They are able to create and manage the online community to what they want to see.

Based on the WELL, I think a self-governing system can be seen as one that gives its users the freedom to do what they want. Users are responsible for their words and their actions. If anything they said was used they can fight for their right to take it back. A person’s creative work is not owned by the platform they are providing for. In a self-governing system, people are able to create the environment they want to be a part of, without having that sense of hierarchy.

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% Joyce Julio completed

According to Fred Turner, Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant founded one of the most powerful computer networks up to the present time, the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link or WELL. Members of WELL consisted of groups of computer technologists, counterculturalists, hackers, and journalists who worked together and built a community where they could exchange information and build social networks for future employment. According to Kevin Kelly, one of the seven design goals of the WELL team was that it would be self-governing. Additionally, Turner said that, “As he set subscription rates, Brand was helping to lay down boundary conditions for a self-governing system. Like a communard of the late 1960s, he was working to establish a forum in which individuals could express themselves and form an alternative community of kindred souls” (Turner, p. 146).

One of the ways that Turner described WELL as a self-governing system was through its early managers’ way of governing it: against hierarchy and for the “power of tools.” This was evident in the way power was given to WELL members to participate in different conference topics available, join or leave conferences as they pleased, and even to create their own conferences if they would like to. Conference hosts and systems owners were also authorized to remove members from WELL (which only happened three times in the first six years, and the removed members were allowed to return). In this way, WELL’s early managers did not exercise their authority to control the system and interaction directly. Members were given the “power of self-rule through information technology.” They could use this power by deleting postings of other members that they did not like from their own screens and also removing their own postings that they wanted to erase.

Another way that the WELL operated as a self-governing system was explained through the managers’ roles in setting the conditions for the environment or the system and then taking a step back and observing how WELL’s users interact, exchange information, make connections, and build new communities, and contribute to how the system evolves. According to Turner, “The WELL as described by Kelly, McClure, Figallo, and Coate was a little, self-contained world, and its managers, like scientists, were ‘as gods’ – designing that world, channeling its embodied ‘energies’ through talk, creating settings in which individuals could simultaneously build their new community and transform themselves by using a new set of digital ‘tools’ to which the WELL had given them access” (Turner, p. 148).

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% Giselle Lopez completed

After reading Chapter 5, “ VIrtuality and Community on WELL” , the idea of a self- governing system is that this one operates with little to no control. Here users had the responsibility of the content and what they posted on the website forum. It is seen that the WELL and the Whole Earth Catalog had the same views; however with the WELL forum users had the chance to interact whenever they wanted, they could exchange any type information and also they had the control to edit or to whom they wanted to deliver the information. They were owners of their words they put out, users had control of almost everything. All source of information could be found in this forum. WELL was a web-system in which users exchanged valuable information among each other,  a self-governing system there were mangers who were people who a higher level but they would only interfere occasionally.

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% Angeline Henriquez completed

Angeline Henriquez

Digital Media and Society

December 1, 2015

 

The Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (WELL) was, as Turner explains it, a teleconferencing system that was modeled after Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog. Originally, the arrangement between Brand and Brilliant was for Brand to post Whole Earth Catalog items onto the WELL, and users then would be allowed to comment and discuss on these topics in a sort of bulletin board system or forum. However, Brand keeping true to his anti-hierarchical and New Communalist dogma, proposed that instead users should be allowed to create their own topics of discussion. It was “a way to create the countercultural ideal of a shared consciousness in a new ‘virtual community’” (p.142).  With the participation of users in an array of fields from engineers and computer technologists, to journalists and musicians, the WELL came to be both a community and a business because of its networking potential and the access to information that could be used offline for a profit.

In this way it served the “shared consciousness” aspect of the New Communalist approach, but it also had to remain non hierarchical which Brand aimed for through management strategies that prompted self-governance within the virtual community. One example of this was the way in which system owners “refrained from intervening in fractious debates whenever possible” (p. 145) and instead gave users the power and authority to erase other users’ posts that they might have found upsetting. However, they were only able to erase them form their own screens, not from the system. Much like we adjust our Facebook settings today to not see updates from certain users on our newsfeeds. Additionally, WELL users that changed their opinions or regretted writing a post were allowed erase them, and so “rather than assert their authority directly, the WELL managers chose to give users the powers to self-rule” (p. 145).

Another strategy to prompt self-regulation required as McClure puts it, “staying the hell out of the way at the right time” (p. 148). By this he meant allowing the system to evolve in its own way. Instead of designing it to be something in particular, they designed it to evolve. By having a text-based forum in which its users were able to build on existing information, and putting the responsibility of these postings on their users, the WELL created in them a sense of ownership (regardless of these postings creating any sort of profit) and the need to maintain the new network/relationships formed and the cyber-structure that provided them. “The WELL sells its users to each other and it considers its users to be both its consumers and its primary producers” creating a self-regulating environment and remaining non-hierarchical.