Newsweek, September 6, 1993

Live Wires

HER NOM DE NET WAS JUNgle Goddess. His was Bill- winkle Moose. After promising electronic interaction on SF Net, a San Francisco- based bulletin board, they finally met and started dating. Alas, computer-generated romances can turn as sour as conventional love affairs. They broke up, but Jungle Goddess, a.k.a. Edith Alderette, isn't bitter. "It's not the net's fault," she says. "It's ours." Alderette, a 26-year-old graduate student, says the net is the center of her social life. She likes the privacy: "You can sit with Cheez Whiz in your hair and chili running down your face... and in the most un-P.C. terms you can get things out." 

Alderette has more than 40 net friends-many of whom she's also met in person. She's gone out with about a dozen guys from the net "in various degrees of datinghood." The net would be worth her time even. without the possibility of true love at the top of the next screen, Alderette says. She has gotten to know peo- ple who wouldn't ordinarily cross her path: an unemployed man who spends. most of his time on Roller- blades in Golden Gate Park, corporate lawyers, a Ph.D. doing DNA research, even a few ex-cons. The only thing they all have in common is that they have something interesting to say. 

Alderette's network, SF Net, is more inclusive than most, largely because of founder Wayne Gregori, whose goal was to provide access to as many people as possible. In fact, you don't even need to own a computer to use SF Net; Gregori has terminals available in 15 Bay Area cafés where 400 regu- lars pay 25 cents for four minutes. SF Net's tiers of communication are typical: open forums that anyone can join, private groups for self-selected users and one-to-one E-mail. 

Gregori isn't the only provider of easy access to the net. In Santa Monica, Calif., more than 5,000 people have signed up with the city's four-year-old public-access system. It's run like a library; all you need to use it is proof of residence, and even that's loosely defined. Rik Tilton, a 20-year-old homeless man, logs on regularly. He's contributed poems and participated in an on-line conference on "being alone." The network, says Tilton, "helps keep you sane." The network is also an emotional lifeline for Bryan Lockwood, a school-plant manager who lives in Atqasuk, Alaska, an Eskimo village (population: 260) reachable only by plane. He stays in touch through various bulletin boards and the Internet, where he's a regular in political debates. Last year he flew down to Anchorage and met some of his on-line buddies, who were shocked by his cropped hair: "They expected me to have a more backwoods look." 

The net provides an instant affinity group. Members of FREE (Fathers' Rights and Equality Exchange) communicate through alt.dads-rights. "It's like having pen pals, except there's an almost immediate response," says Don Beaver, a 30-year-old Pennsylvania father who has custody of his son Donald, 2. His wife has his other son, Noah, 1. Beaver says he and his net friends "talk back and forth and sometimes vent frustrations." 

Like any other community, the virtual community also has its share of wackos. Some are the electronic equivalent of stalkers; they fixate on certain people and start harassing them. Flamers are often drunk or stoned when they log on at 2 a.m. Addicts sneak on during work and stay up late at home, glued to the screen. "Their lives have become so vicarious," says André Bacard, who writes a technology column for The Humanist magazine. "They live in a complete fantasy world."