The WELL was a dial-up Bulletin Board System (BBS) that stood for the “Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link.” It was the earliest affordable multiline chat-based forum. Founded in 1985 by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant, it was an electronic offshoot of Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalogue (1968), a how-to guide for building your own off-grid civilization. The WELL featured message board–style discussions, divided by topic. Writing about ...
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to APress Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2023
A. AthertonThe Rise of Virtual Communities https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-9297-6_22. Howard Rheingold
Writer and Lecturer on “Virtual Communities” and an Original Member of The WELL
Amber Atherton1
(1)
San Francisco, CA, USA
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