After discussing the WELL in class and learning that it is still an active website I decided to check it out. The site describes itself as its own territory, like a virtual nation. As we learned in class the WELL was the catalyst for modern day social media. It was the first water cooler, the primordial ooze from which the online community rose, and led Howard Rheingold to first coin the term "virtual community".
In Rheingold's book he tells an anecdote in which the narrator describes his computer as a place of solace. It's interesting to think about since I know when have I have any kind of question I turn to the internet. If I have a question about a definition of a word, or an exact date I know Google is simply a few clicks away and thanks to the "did you mean feature" I can even use Google to ensure my spelling is correct. More than once I have said to my friends "why are we arguing about this we all have smart phones" hinting that the answer be searched on the internet instead of our brains.
It's interesting to see The Well as compared to other, newer websites and social media. The Well looks like something out of the early 2000's actually. I wonder if they want to keep the "vintage" look or if they just never got around to updating it.
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