Monday, July 09, 2012

Technology - Howard Rheingold - What the WELL's Rise and Fall Tell Us About Online Community - The Atlantic

Technology - Howard Rheingold - What the WELL's Rise and Fall Tell Us About Online Community - The Atlantic: lash forward nearly three decades. I have not been active in the WELL for more than fifteen years. But when the word got around in 2010 that I had been diagnosed with cancer (I'm healthy now), people from the WELL joined my other friends in driving me to my daily radiation treatments. Philcat was one of them. Like many who harbor a special attachment to their home town long after they leave for the wider world, I've continued to take an interest -- at a distance -- in the place where I learned that strangers connected only through words on computer screens could legitimately be called a "community."

I got the word that the WELL was for sale via Twitter, which seemed either ironic or appropriate, or both. Salon, which has owned the WELL since 1999, has put the database of conversations, the list of subscribers, and the domain name on the market, I learned.

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