Deeper by John Seabrook, Simon & Schuster, $25, ISBN
0 684 80175 2
WRITER John Seabrook鈥檚 work first arrived in my house in June 1994, in the
form of a long article in The New Yorker tracing the emotional and
practical effects of receiving his first 鈥渇lame鈥� e-mail鈥攖he electronic
equivalent of hate mail. With a clarity of inner vision I had never before
experienced, I knew he was around 5 foot 6, stocky, 55, dark-haired and
dark-bearded with streaks of grey.
I met Seabrook at the 1995 Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference in San
Francisco. He was more than 6 feet tall, thin as a tapered candle, barely 30,
and sported a blond ponytail. 鈥淲rite short,鈥� he said when I informed him that he
had brought the wrong physique, 鈥渓ive tall.鈥� Portions of that article in The
New Yorker reappear in this book, along with portions of the article that
propelled him online in 1993 via CompuServe, 鈥淓mail from Bill鈥�. Assigned by the
magazine to write a profile of Microsoft mogul Bill Gates, he was told by
Gates鈥檚 people that he couldn鈥檛 have 鈥渇ace-time鈥� with America鈥檚 most famous
billionaire for two and a half months. Seabrook cycled through New York traffic
to buy a modem to get to know his subject electronically before the meeting.
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For most of the book, we follow Seabrook鈥檚 life online as he learns to
release his inner nerd, deliberately hidden away after taunting during his prep
school days. As a portrait of the parts of cyberspace he knows, Deeper
is accurate. He notes the cliques, the double standards and the uncritical
excitement over the new medium鈥檚 potential for many-to-many social revolution.
With the arrival in 1995 of a Net-based medium which marketing people think they
understand, the Web, this revolutionary fervour began losing ground to a
gold-rush mentality.
Seabrook鈥檚 path from 鈥渃lueless newbie鈥� to old hand follows the familiar
stages found in books like J. C. Herz鈥檚 Surfing: excitement,
exploration, finding a home on the WELL (San Francisco鈥檚 electronic conferencing
system), getting his mother online, toying with questions of addiction and a
longing to unplug, then setting up a tiny homestead in the form of a Web page.
Seabrook admits that compared to his great-grandfather鈥檚 experiences of laying
claim to a homestead in the American West, this is not particularly courageous
stuff, but finds a sense of kinship with his ancestor.
Many of the points that Seabrook makes are important modifications of the
somewhat sentimental wisdom promulgated by cyberspace鈥檚 earliest settlers.
Howard Rheingold鈥檚 The Virtual Community talked of the 鈥済roupmind鈥� and
the emotional support and practical help shared on the WELL. Seabrook eyes the
groupmind more sceptically although he fails to consider the role of hosts and
moderators in making the difference between the relative civilisation of the
WELL and the unremitting savagery of some areas of Usenet, home of the Net鈥檚
newsgroups.
Seabrook鈥檚 arrival in cyberspace was not as early or joyous as Rheingold鈥檚.
After a sojourn on Usenet (to study flaming) and sex chat on America Online and
CompuServe (he called his wife in to rule on the question of whether it
constituted adultery), Seabrook found himself lurking happily on the WELL.
Until, that is, his flame article was published in The New Yorker. He
logged on to find it being vigorously and negatively dissected, that his
presence had been detected and announced along with a request for his response.
鈥淚 felt as if the television had walked across the room, pulled up a chair, and
asked me a question,鈥� he writes of this unhappy moment. It began his
transformation from observer to participant.
A spectacular amount of online bitchiness has accompanied Deeper,
from the moment it was announced amid rumours of a huge advance. On the WELL,
people have cooperated in a word-by-word critique of the jacket blurb, carped
over whether their permission had been asked or why they鈥檇 been ignored, and
made plans to attend the book parties. Because I have read these topics and
participated in some of the conversations Seabrook quotes from, reading
Deeper is like reading someone鈥檚 diary to find out what he was thinking
during a party you both attended. It is hard to know how it will come across to
someone who wasn鈥檛 there.