The rock band that inspired the internet

By: Allegra Rosenberg / BBC
Translation: Telegrafi.com

The Grateful Dead weren't just a band. They represented a way of life. Originally a local blues band known as the Warlocks, they quickly rose to the role of resident band for author Ken Kesey's Acid Tests, and by the late 60s had become a powerful force on the national concert scene. The Dead, as many call the group, helped define San Francisco's distinctive counterculture, blending folk and Americana influences with Eastern spirituality—as well as forward-thinking experimentation with futuristic tools.

But the Grateful Dead went beyond the rock, psychedelia, and drug culture of the 60s. Thanks to a group of technology and music enthusiasts, the Dead introduced what some call the first true online community. Generations later, the ideas that were formed in this pioneering digital space continue to resonate in our daily lives.

Fans of the Grateful Dead, known as Deadheads, were inspired by the band's embrace of technology, from its pioneering sound systems to its deep multimedia visual aspects. Many fans were themselves technologists and engineers who worked in Silicon Valley or at universities across America with access to early Internet technology – which they had been using since the late 70s to exchange valuables, such as Grateful Dead playlists and illegal drugs.

In the 80s of the XNUMXth century, many years ago World Wide Web-it, a virtual online community appeared called The Well (short for Whole Earth 'Electronic Link). Centered in the San Francisco Bay Area in California, The Well not only did it flourish in its own right, but it became one of the most influential factors in the birth of the internet as we know it today. And its longevity was, in large part, thanks to the fans of the band Grateful Dead.

The Well was born from a project started by writer, activist and businessman Steward Brand, who in the 70s began publishing a print publication he called Whole Earth CatalogueInspired by the back-to-the-land movement that had thousands of hippies across America forming communes, Catalog was designed to provide “access to tools” – its slogan – that anyone could use to build their lives on the movement’s ecological and spiritual principles. This meant that in addition to the physical tools it offered for sustainable living – such as solar devices, looms and seed kits – it contained a series of books and pamphlets by thinkers such as Buckminster Fuller and Marshall McLuhan that aimed to provide ideas on how to live a better, more conscious life. Catalog had a huge impact, and not just on hippies. In a famous 2005 speech, the co-founder of Apple Steve Jobs called it "one of the bibles of my generation."

"We are like gods and we better get used to it," he claimed. Catalog in the introduction to the spring 1969 edition, proposing catalog and its offerings as a means to develop “intimate, personal power” to counter the “power and glory created from a distance” that is dominated from afar by governments and big business.

Catalog proved to be very popular, selling a million copies by 1972. Larry Brilliant, a physician and activist who was also the owner of the computer company Networking Technologies International, approached Brandi with the idea of ​​setting it up catalog on the internet. It was a radical idea at a time when most people didn't have access to the internet. But Brand saw the potential to give readers codes a place where they would talk to each other. Brilliant provided the funding and equipment, while Brand helped the users and build the community culture, and in 1985, The Well became functional.

The Well was a “Bulletin Board System” [Bulletin Board System – BBS], an early textual form of communication online that preceded the mainstream internet by many years. People could connect a computer over a telephone line and send messages or share files. But, The Well was more advanced than other BBSs. In the 80s, these systems typically operated with a single modem, often from a private home, and only one person could connect at a time. Real-time conversations between multiple users were impossible. The Well, which operated from the office of Whole Earth Catalogue in San Francisco, was among the first to change this. It was professionally managed with command software PicoSpan, and had the necessary equipment for use by many users simultaneously – fifty people could be online and talk at the same time. This was a revolutionary experience.

Howard Rheingold was a freelance writer working from home, looking for ways to socialize and pass the time. As a devout reader of Whole Earth Catalogue since its first issue, it became part of The Well-it since its inception, registering immediately after it opened to the public in 1985.

“Writing is a lonely job,” he says. “You’re just there with your typewriter and your words. Instead of going to bars or cafes, I found I could go into The Well and to have that kind of conversation between the writing processes.” Rheingold saw it as a demonstration of electronic connection. He coined the term “virtual community” to describe it. The Wellin his 1992 book of the same title Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic FrontierIn the book, he observed that “[most] people who have not yet used [networked communication] remain unaware of how the social, political, and scientific experiments being conducted today through computer networks could profoundly change our lives in the near future.”

At its beginning, The Well was populated by a diverse group of interlocutors. The savvy owners gave free invitations to journalists, computer enthusiasts, and other prominent figures in a culture focused on experimentation and Silicon Valley-style thinking. The Well emphasized independence and ownership: the login screen told users “You own your words.” Many see this as the first time that user-generated content was recognized as a core value of an electronic tool.

“It was a bit of an eclectic mix with a strong countercultural flavor,” Rheingold says. One of those who received these free invitations was David Gans, a Bay Area musician, DJ, and Ded'hed who was interested in the idea of ​​finding an online home for the Grateful Dead's vibrant community. The Well was the perfect match. Alongside co-founders Bennett Falk and Mary Eisenhart, he set up the forum Grateful Dead.

Eisenhart, then editor of a Bay Area computer magazine, MicroTimes, recalls how Grateful Dead fanzines got her thinking about connecting members of this fandom. “[The fanzines] would get touching letters from people who thought they were the only Deadheads in their state, but at least now they could connect with other Deadheads,” she says. “I was really drawn to the ability to transcend the barriers of time and space to connect with those you had a real affinity for.”

It didn't take long and the space Grateful Dead IN The Well exploded in popularity. At two dollars an hour to connect (about six dollars or 5.23 euros today) and an eight-dollar membership fee ($23 or 21 euros today), the Dead'heads' dedication to endless discussions about their favorite band helped fund the entire platform.

What were they talking about? According to Gans, about many things. Not all Grateful Dead fans "crossed the wall" to the rest of the world. The Well-it. Many remained within their own world, chatting endlessly. The single forum for Deadheads became so difficult to manage that it had to be split into several separate forums that were created for tours, tickets and concerts, says Gans. There was also the deadlit conference – “conference” was the term The Well-it for a special thematic forum within the platform – where users could talk about the Dead's connections to literature and analyze the poetry of the band's lyricists – Robert Hunter and John Perry Barlow.

Barlow himself was a key figure in the intersection of the Grateful Dead and the history of the Internet. Raised on a farm in Wyoming, and introduced to LSD by Timothy Leary himself during college, he ended up joining the band in the 70s. He wrote songs before returning to run the family farm, where his distance from the Bay Area contributed to his interest in the emerging field of personal computers and Internet connectivity.

Gans recalls interviewing him in 1982, a few years before the creation of The Well-it. “He said [to the Dead], ‘This is a community without a physical location.’ And that stuck with me for a long time.” Grateful Dead fans were now a nationally dispersed group who regularly connected at concerts and through a large mailing list. In fact, The Well It wasn't even the Ded'heds' first foray into digital communication. According to Gans, one of the first non-technical groups to form in Arpanet, the forerunner of the Internet that was run by universities and the American government, was devoted to discussions about the Grateful Dead. A full-fledged embrace of cyberspace was the natural next step.

However, Barlow didn't immediately jump on board. Gans recalls his skepticism: “[He said] ‘I’m not sure I want to be part of something where you have to come up with a nickname for yourself.’”

But it wasn't long before Barlow embraced The Wellin, and soon became a pioneering force as the internet entered the mainstream.

He was the first person to use the term cyberspace [cyberspace]of the book's author neuromancer, William Gibson, for the emerging network of computer and telecommunications systems that connected people around the world. Barlow began to call it cyberspace-in an "electronic border", drawing on his experiences growing up in Wyoming, in the mountainous west of America. The Well and other similar positions, such as Prodigy and The Source, were like the Wild West, writes Barlow, “vast, uncharted, with cultural and legal ambiguity […] difficult to navigate and open to access.”

Barlow found a home within the community of The Wellof hackers, free speech enthusiasts, and home computer pioneers. He quickly realized the potential of The Well-it as a precursor to the ways in which the Internet would forever change human communication. In The Well, Barlow participated in lengthy discussions, often debating with anonymous hackers and “freaks” – or phone line hackers – about the role that networked communication would play in the future of humanity.

After several run-ins with law enforcement officers who didn't understand anything, Barlow increasingly realized the need to protect Internet users from the overreach of institutions and governments that wanted to control it. In 1990, he founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) – an advocacy organization that fights for freedom of expression and other civil rights in the digital world.

“And then I realize he founded the EFF and he was the ultimate cyberspace lord!” says Gans. The EFF quickly gained a national profile and, 35 years later, remains one of the most influential forces in the world of technology policy.

For denizens of cyberspace who wanted to engage in discussions and collaborate with the people who were shaping the future of virtual communities, The Well was the place to be. I support the Ded'heds a lot. The Well-it, members included technology journalists, such as John Markoff and Steve Levy; entrepreneurs such as Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist; Steve Case, founder of AOL; home computer enthusiasts, such as the co-founder of Apple -it, Steve Wozniak; phone geeks and hackers; libertarians; hippies; and even the founders of the magazine Wired.

"Over the years we've had people who were retired submarine captains, we've had journalism professors. Jane Hirschfield, a very well-known poet, is a regular user, and John Carroll, who was a columnist for San Francisco Chronicle"...he was the media conference host for many years," Gans recalls, describing the flurry of users. The Well-it.

Many of these groups often clashed. But this was part of the friendly spirit of the The Well"You can't have a lot of great conversations with people who agree on everything all the time," he points out. "Having a little bit of friction can help create lively conversations."

Initially, geography limited the early use of The Wellin the area around its servers in San Francisco. Remote users had to pay telephone charges to connect, until in 1990 The Well connected to the global internet.

Although The Well never had more than about five thousand users at its peak, its media coverage and connection to the innovations of the time, as well as its key role in the creation of the EFF, gave it a much greater reputation compared to more popular mainstream platforms like CompuServe and Prodigy"To be in The Well “It kept me six months ahead of everyone else — in terms of what was really happening on the internet,” said tech executive Jim Rutt in a 2022 interview. It was a vital incubator for ideas and movements in the fields of computers, communications, and social change.

But as he grew up, The Well encountered difficulties in governing, as Rheingold recalls, thanks to its libertarian ethos of free speech. “There was no politics. It was consensus, which meant that in order to sanction or expel someone for bad behavior, you had to have people in the The Well to debate this endlessly. I mean, thousands of posts.” Moderation lessons were learned, such as — for Rheingold — the vital importance of moderators behaving more like party hosts, becoming extremely proactive about what content they will allow and promote. “Moderators are filters and sensors,” he said, while hosts “greet people at the door, introduce them to each other, stop fights.”

How much for The Well-in, later it passed under the ownership of a number of different companies, including the magazine Salon, who bought it in 1999. And, it still exists today, home to a small but loyal group of slowly dwindling users, many of whom have been in The Well for nearly 40 years, says Gans. He reveals that discussions have begun about how to archive and close the platform at some point in the future, preserving it for future generations to go back in time.

Reflecting on the history of virtual communities and social networks since the heyday of The Well, Rheingold thinks that small communities committed to affinity are a dying breed.Facebook"You really eroded the proliferation of smaller communities of people with a common interest," he says, in favor of larger platforms full of audiences that can be tapped for data and served with ads. "When your community members become the product instead of the customer, you no longer have a community," says Eisenhart.

The Well represents a moment in history when, as founder Steward Brand put it in Rheingold's book, "the personal computer revolutionaries were the counterculture." Long before the rise of social networks and smartphones, a virtual community was a truly groundbreaking concept. /Telegraph/