The WELL, Birthplace Of Online Movement, Is Up For Sale | Hacker News Reader

The WELL, Birthplace Of Online Movement, Is Up For Sale

npr.org

27 pointsThrymr13 comments

PLATO is better described as the birthplace of the online movement. http://platohistory.org

This morning I asked Howard whether he actually mentioned PLATO in the NPR interview and he said he mentioned PLATO and BBS's, and that NPR edited that out. Thanks NPR, it wouldn't do to tell the true story. We must prolong the myth.

(FYI I have been on The WELL since 1986. And started using PLATO in 1979, and its golden years were already past in 1979!)

I have been a member since 99. The place had some of the best discussions I have ever participated in perhaps because you have to pay for it. Unfortunately it's not what it used to be.

Still, I can't get my head around whether it would make sense to do a paid discussion forum.

That is an interesting topic - I wonder how many people would pay to be able to read and participate in a discussion forum that is highly targeted, such as Hacker News?

Yeah.

They have this saying "You own your words" and a pretty strong discussion ethics which really makes it stand out.

There are no voting or anything else involved though so you kind of have to find the nuggets yourself. It's based on Pine so there is a lot of opportunity to dig around.

Minor point, but Pine is one of the console email clients, the conferencing software use for the actual forums on The WELL is PicoSpan [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PicoSpan

Sorry you are of course right.

It really was host to some of the best (and civil) discussions I've ever had the pleasure to lurk.

But I think twitter, facebook (and maybe aol) really did a number on the Well. I mean, time marches on. And the Well didn't, or wouldn't.

I remember the Well like I remember Geocities and CompuServe - fondly.

Yeah.

It's one of those places where I would love to get permissions to take out some of those discussions and create a book.

Especially in philosophy & physics there where some really mindbending discussions.

I can think of two modern payment-required forums off the top of my head. They couldn't be more different.

Metafilter: $5, primarily about posting interesting links and having hopefully civil discussions.

Something Awful: $10, very free-form and anarchic, used to be a center of organizing trolls, now it's not so much for that but it still has a kind of "friendly assholes" aura.

The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link had some great catalogues. They're sort of available now as PDF.

(http://www.wholeearth.com/history-whole-earth-catalog.php)

These were the kind of eclectic collections of well curated items that make great books. I'd be interested if there's something similar.

Thats the site for the Whole Earth Catalog, not the WELL. They were both founded by Stewart Brand, but otherwise are different things.

This is a 7-minute audio-only piece.

Isn't this like the fourth time?

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