NET@FANDOM.COM

 While science fiction often depicted computers, few foresaw the coming of the linked personal computer, and all its manifestations.

 An exception was Fred Pohl's The Age of the Pussyfoot, a 1966 novel. Though its primary focus was the then-hot innovation of cryonics, its hero used a personal, portable computer to wire himself into the vastly information-dense future world.

 Now, a scant thirty years later, Pohl's devices seem quite plausible--indeed, just over the technological horizon. For now our view of the future is dominated by the view that Data Rules All.

 This, too, shall pass. For now, the Net has snared us. Cast outward by the culture of computer nerds to ensnare and transform the globe, it is the current hot metaphor for fast change and broader horizons and info-deluge.

 Alas, it comes with its own hot-eyed prophets, grimly sure they are on the cutting edge. John Perry Barlow, much-interviewed savant of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, believes that "we are in the middle of the most transforming technological event since the capture of fire."

  Gee whiz.
 
Revolutionary rhetoric, aside from making you automatically hide your wallet, should alert us to our past. What's being overthrown? Has something like the Net appeared before?

 Arguably, yes. Around 1930 a small new phenomenon arose in Depression-ridden America, spawned out of the letter columns in science fiction magazines: fandom.

 Though today the term means any gathering of enthusiasts, fandom evolved in the science fiction community. Strikingly, it anticipated much of Net culture. Its history can suggest how the Net will evolve, often recapitulating earlier experience.

 Fandom grew first through individual correspondence. It was cheap and quick, continent-wide contact for a penny stamp.
 
Just as with email, sometimes science fiction fans sent continuous chains of letters, involving N letter-writers, called WONWs for Wide Open N-Ways.

 Then came fanzines. Often odd and eccentric, sometimes devoted solely to news or club functions, these circulated nationally and flourished, growing into the several hundreds of titles.

 As the number of 'zines grew, an anarchic sociology flourished. Vile-mouthed, aggressive fans were termed fuggheads, an obvious pun, much like the "flamers"of today.

 (Technically, fugg should be a true word to make up a pun. There is the Brit "fug" -- a bad smell, as in a crowded room; rather apt here, actually -- but okay, then "fugghead" is actually an "orthographic disguise," as fellow fan friend Mose Feder pointed out to me. This is precisely the sort of obscure note fans, and Netwonks alike, love.)

 As cross-talk grew in the early 1940s, to bring order fans formed APAs--Amateur Press Associations of limited (and later, invitational) membership. They didn't invent the idea, merely transformed it.

 The APAs were much like today's Net newsgroups and listservs, and user groups (which are practical forums, mostly). All act as orderly mailing circles. The first sf APA, Fantasy APA, was founded by Donald Wollheim, who went on to become a central figure in the genre's editorial evolution. He wanted to devise a mechanism for everyone to get the primary fanzines of the day.

 In the 1940s general fandom devised the "genzine" or general fanzine, which combined features and columns of broad interest. Instead of imitation professional magazines ("prozines" of fiction, science features, reviews, letters), fandom broadened into myriad individual, idiosyncratic mimeographed expressions.

 Genzines narrowed the strategy of the mainstream's broadly based, mass-produced magazines, using an insider's voice and attitude, with each editor's special approach.

 Fandom evolved through this stage in the 1940s, then beyond, ever-restless. Most of the Net's "emoticons", typographical tricks read sideways to convey smiles, disapproval or a sardonic wink--:), :(, ;)--appeared in fanzines by the 1940s.

 General consensus holds that the quality of sf fandom peaked in the 1950s and 60s. That's when I entered, a rank neo, into a community of fanzines honed by criticism and decades-old tradition. The humorous, personal essay reigned supreme. Some fans flowered into professionals.

 By this time fandom had grown large. It began to split into sub-fandoms, often groups which had little real need for the written word: fans of medieval reinactments, space advocates, costumers. Well before the 1970s, fandoms devoted to other areas had begun, including the early Baker Street Irregularsfor Sherlock Holmes, 'zines for the mystery and romance genres, even for model railroaders and bikers.

 The Net, like sf fandom, began as a quick exchange medium, under funding for the ARPANet from the Advanced Research Projects Administration of the Department of Defense. ARPANet was designed to be intricately dispersed, hard to break even in a nuclear war.

 It linked several national laboratories, where I first used it in 1969, then swelled to include universities, and kept growing. The crucial element was "packet-switching", whereby messages could be routed through any of several different routes, automatically going around jams and breaks.

 Today's Net works the same way, now with many more nodes. All this is the fruit of computers, which can route and control the info-flow even as it has expanded by many orders of magnitude.

 I remember sending work-in-progress over the telephone links, on the cranky and cumbersome computers we had then at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, as it was called then. For me, it was a handy way of collaborating with plasma physicists at Los Alamos.

 The incredible speed--imagine, response within seconds!--encouraged casual conversation, which helped spark ideas. It was fun. You could route the same message to a whole list of users, encouraging on-the-spot brainstorming. We sent data, too, of course, and whole scientific papers.

 Demand for user time swelled. I used the tiny Net between national laboratories to invent and propagate the first computer virus, and wrote up the idea on a typewriter--but that's another story. The point is that scientists drove the development of what was supposed to be a purely national defense application. As so often happens in social history, once creative people get their hands on a new toy, they might make anything of it--and usually do.

 By analogy with fandom, we can expect the Net to split into APA-like groups. The current user and interest groups have trouble maintaining their boundaries; once a flamer finds you, he can drop in anytime. Even security codes provide no firm privacy against determined hackers.  Unlike the post office, fandom's first carrier, the Net is a highly public babble. Egalitarian forums can have notoriously low signal-to-noise ratios. In the electronic agora, a mob often drowns out Socrates.

 Like the Net's Multi-User Dungeons (where MUDdies find virtual playmates in fantasy worlds), fandom long ago spawned fantasy sub-fandoms devoted to specific authors, settings (mostly medievalists) and world-views. Quickly, in-group vs. out-group became a favorite game.

 As "newbies" appear in the Net, after first lurking on chat sessions, their activity will echo the influx into fandom of "neos" who timidly tried out "fanac".

 As a recent New Yorker cartoon remarked, on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Nobody in fandom knew if you were a pimply adolescent, either, if you didn't want them to. This let a first-rank fanzine editor conceal her sex for years, simply by using her ambiguous name, Lee Hoffman. Others concocted entire fan-writing careers for nonexistent people. You could be anybody, or nobody.

 Virtuality--connection without proximity--is a major attraction in both fandom and the Net. Nobody knows you're a dog through the U.S. mails, either.  Fans could be utterly different in their fanzine persona, which may be why both fandom and the Net was invented by individualistic Americans. Sure, we generated it out of ARPANet and the Cold War's focus on organized research labs--but the USSR had those, too, and never allowed a Net to form. They couldn't tolerate the openness which would come from letting the idea grow.

Our genius was to spawn from the odd little convenience I knew at Livermore a world metaphor.

 On the Net, openness has, alas, led to a torrent of rudeness. Already there is a gathering fear among the usual social censors that the digital universe shall become a cesspool for some ugly fish indeed, child pornographers, con artists and predators of every stripe. As Phil Patton remarked in Esquire, the Net was built by professors and is run by sophomores.

 The Net has not yet evolved anything to parallel that vital organ, the genzine. Yet many frustrated users complain of wasted time finding what they want, then understanding its often contorted syntax, wiseacre impenetrablity, stilted jargon and outright poor writing.

 As fandom grew more variegated, genzines reflected a broadening of interests, carrying personal columns of humor and reflection, science articles, amateur fiction, stylish gossip, and inevitably, thoughtful pieces on the weighty issue of the future of fandom.

 By the fandom analogy, then, the Net should soon develop its own form of the genzine, though geared to the new technology. Users will flock to this new entity, avoiding flamers, asininity and noise. After all, the Net is an openinvitation to have a hundred million pen pals. Even with gopher programs, you spend much time filtering the nonsensical and boring. Among these one already finds thoughtful pieces on the weighty issue of the future of the Net...

 Just as private correspondence and APAs still thrive, the Net's basics will remain. But a genzine-like entity will arise and command loyalties, particularly from "newbies" who need orientation.

 Few people truly want raw data; they seek information, taste, even wisdom. Filtering the Net gusher is essential, and finder software continues to improve beyond the simple key-word seekers of today. But these still take our scarcest resource: time. Often, gobs of it.

 The Net's siren call, people sharing your very own obsession, is addictive for many of us. About seven percent of the USA uses the Net now. The World Wide Web has ten million home pages, where one can display for the virtual passers-by. In less than six months, the number of web pages doubles; the surge is faster than exponential.

 Net proselytes abound, proclaiming the coming transformation. This echoes the founder of modern science fiction, Hugo Gernsback, whose letter columns helped start fandom, moving it beyond letter-writing and into local clubs, then fanzines. He proclaimed in a 1930 editorial for Science Wonder Stories that from the base of fandom, the world could be changed:

 If every man, woman, boy and girl could be induced to read science fiction right along, there would certainly be a great resulting benefit to the community, in that the educational standards of its people would be raised tremendously. Science fiction would make people happier, give them a broader understanding of the world; make them more tolerant.

 If the Net's growth profile parallels that of TVs, VCRs and other electronic conduits, it will saturate with over three quarters of the country online: 200-plus million users. But the Net isn't merely national; by saturation time in a decade or two, there could be a billion users.

 Language problems will be only a minor barrier by then. Programs for crude translation already flourish on the Net. This cornucopia of contact will need a new generation of filters, and something better than filters.

  We want more, sure--and we'll get it--but we also come to want better. But even the best filter is inherently passive. None can fulfill the higher functions of helping to generate the quality material most readers want.

 Think of trying to find a discourse on, say, the cultural impact of the Beatles. There may be hundreds of candidate World Wide Web sites, but you want a treatment for your twelve year old. And you wouldn't mind reading some adult nostalgic reflection on the Fab Four yourself.

 First you pick key words: BEATLES, CULTURE, IMPACT, etc. Then you set separate vocabulary levels for both of you, which winnows the fare down to perhaps a few dozen sites. Now add a syntax evaluator, to eliminate erudite postmodern rigmarole your daughter (and probably you, too) couldn't stomach.

She won't want to see analysis which compares the Beatles with the Kinks, say, but you might, so you tailor your list for that.

 By this time you're facing two customized sets of choices, probably only a handful of potential sources. Only then need real browsing begin.

 But who made these documents coherent, deft, interesting?

 The author--plus an editor. Someone must go out into the datascape and find the writers who can be urged to do the right job at the right time, and then worry at the extra drafts, polishing it properly.

 As Virginia Postrel, editor of Reason magazine, has emphasized, the Net Age will become the Editors' Era. It must--by analogy with our present.

 In talk radio and late night television, star figures filter the daily info-stream for their simpatico audience. Their following finds them and sticks around, a fandom defined by interest, not geography or income.

 Rush Limbaugh is essentially a highly personal editor. On the Net, most people don't want or need an idiosyncratic figure marshalling material for them. But they will come to enjoy a certain style and flavor, just as you tasted many magazines before settling on this one. Rather than favoring a journal of policy wonk-speak, you settled on a rather broader view, savoring the world with an attitude.

 A Net genzine would probably begin as a Best Of feature, with pieces gleaned worldwide labeled by interest-area. The better ones will go pro, requiring a fee to log onto the edited database. Authors will get paid. To raise quality, editors will start to demand revisions of raw Net material, using the carrot of payment. Genzines will become labyrinthine magazines.

 Probably the Net will end up as the fandoms have today-- dispersed, intense, with highly evolved functions to screen out noise. Even at saturation, the Net may be an intense interest for only a small minority. Predictably, that minority will think itself somewhat superior. Using the Net will be a signature of being quite With It. I remember, in a debate over cyberpunk in 1985, when the writer John Shirley accused me of not being "culturally online" because I didn't think cyberpunk was much of a revolution. As it turned out, "online" was already a With It word. John hadn't a clue about the Net, didn't use it, and wasn't actually on line--but he knew the jargon. So shall fashion always be.

 And data isn't everything. Most people in the world don't write letters or often consult a book. Life looms larger. Much of our shiny future will look much like today, but with more options.

 Of course, the analogy is only qualitative. Fanzines started crudely and gradually, as reproduction technology available to the amateur improved, became more fancy, stylist and hierarchial. Inventive layout and beautiful mimeography (remember that?--rotating drums of ink which pressed their sticky fluid through stencils cut on typewriters) were the standard.

 The Net was born in a crude era of computer technology, but now is growing sophisticated. A vast menu of graphics confronts even the casually interested. Much of the fancy Net-art I've seen online resembles an explosion in a typesetter's shop, but it will settle down.

 We can expect, though, increasing use of decision-tree options on the Net, so that intelligent search patterns can bring you quickly where you want to go. Or, better, to a piece of information you didn't know you wanted, but are glad to have once you see it. Hypertext methods are the beginning of this.

Fandom invented a Women-Only APA, a fanzine designed to increase activity itself (appropriately titled Fanac), Secret APA, even a fanzine to reconcentrate interest called Focal Point. We should expect the Net to blossom with similarly ingenious social molds and aids.

 Analogy to fandom can tell us where we should start. The gratifications of both fandom and the Net are many, but surely they both depend upon a slippery sense of community, on shared mythologies, on semantic codes which convey much in the intricate disguises of worked language.

 Just because you're reading this, you're part of a large, shared community -- the Folk of the Book. Magazines are really floppy books, announcing their impermanence by their physical flexibility.

 Many of you may not know the Net (yet), or may dislike it, or even fear it. We hear such sentiments in thoughtful pieces about the impending Death of the Book.

 I suspect that fevered news about the imminent demise are far off the mark. The genzines I envision could be read on screen, but I doubt it.

 Extended pieces--think here of The New Yorker's protracted nonfiction, particularly by John McPhee--are wearing, if read in phosphorescent type. The book is an inherently comfortable, portable technology, time-shaped to our liking. We won't give it up. Nor shall we have to--even as Netheads.

 Envision a book that interfaces with your computer. You boot up some evening and notice that the latest issue of Worldview, your favorite Net genzine, is freshly out. You send your credit card charge number (you must get around to setting up a subscription...). The number gets checked in a few seconds, and here comes your "copy", on screen in full color. Plenty of great articles, commentary, humor. Yum yum.

 You can download it onto hard copy, of course, and pass it around among friends; this liability is the flip side of the ease we have in duplicating files. Maybe you do, but since Worldview costs only, say, fifty cents, what's the point? You friends can buy it if they want. And who wants all that paper cluttering up the house?

 Instead, you download it into a small "microdisk". You use a serial port feeding into a special appliance -- or else, embedded in your computer already. Out pops a microdisk (which may be shaped like a cube or a sphere, depending on details of future technology).

 Then you go get your book--singular. Since you only need one, it has a hand-tooled leather jacket, is just the size you like, and opens onto pages which feel like fine paper, heavy in cloth content. They aren't paper, of course.

You open your book and power it up; the rechargeable batteries take up most of the spine. The pages are blank, until you insert the microdisk into a port just below the batteries. The pages "light up" in the sense that black type appears against a creamy off-white background. Color illustration fills theallowed pixels.

 You start with the table of contents, notice that a brilliant piece by Greg Bear on the new microwave-driven space craft is on page 48. Great; you touch the icon next to the Bear header and turn the page. There's the Bear piece. If you had touched nothing, just turned the page, you'd have found page 2. It displays a short, witty editorial by Virginia Postrel on the fall of the last Chinese dictator; she argues that the Net helped bring him down. True, but you'd already assumed that. You yawn.

 On to the Bear piece. You've designed your book to be compact, so it only has twenty pages. The Bear article has plenty of high-resolution photographs and diagrams, some in sidebars which you also access with a touch. The whole piece exceeds your twenty pages, so after you finish the last page, you then return to the first page and find the rest of the article. A single touch takes you back to an earlier page, if you want to check a point.

 Your book will run between five and ten hours without recharging; of course, you can just insert charged batteries from your stock and keep going, or take a half dozen with you on a hiking trip, if you like.

 Your book is definitely not a terminal on the Net. It just conveys the Net's bounty to you in a fashion you like. You can fancy up your sole book all you want. Hang the expense, after all it's just one, with maybe a simpler book at work.

 And forget about rooms of bulging bookshelves, too--no need to keep your store of knowledge impressed into what are, after all, the encased bodies of dead trees.

 Instead, you keep most books on microdisk. Some of great beauty or treasured memory you keep in real paper. First editions won't go out of style, for those who like them. They'll be appreciated all the more for their true rarity.

 Of course, something will be lost in this transition. We won't know what, entirely, until the new tech is enshrined. That's the way the future works--peering through the future windshield, gazing through the fog of time, details are blurred, and we're doing well if we can stay on the path.

 In 1964 Marshall McLuhan said, "We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us." The Net may well shape us into social patterns we have seen before. In other ways, it will return us to what we know: genzines, high tech books, the ever more nuanced knowledge of conceptual communities like fandom.

 Kevin Kelly of Wired magazine thinks that the Net will become the dominant force in our culture. I rather doubt it; who in the nineteenth century would have described the Post Office that way? Yet it seemed equally wondrous, at the time.

 So did the telephone, a bit later. Both changed the world but did not become a dominant force. They blended into a background which itself never ceased to seethe.

 The telephone opens the Net to most of us, so the Net is best seen as a wedding of the Post Office and the telephone--a further working out of the ideas contained in that nineteenth century technology.

 But if Kelly is right, an eye cast to our past is even more necessary now.
 

Comments and objections to this column are welcome. Please send them to Gregory Benford, Physics Department, Univ. Calif., Irvine, CA 92717. For e-mail: gbenford@uci.edu.
 

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