At the end of the year come great times of reflection on the past year: Yom Kippur, Samhain, All Soul's Day, Christmas and New Year's. Emotionally, this is the worst time of the year for many of us, as we strive to keep up with end-of-the-year responsibilities to work and family, cope with less than sunny weather, and try to live up to the goals we've set for ourselves. We even struggle with the discrepancy of expectations versus reality.
Some sociologists have attributed the rise in depression and gloom at the end of the year to the lack of extended families in modern American culture. For many years I felt that the sheer distance separating me from the rest of my family was part of what kept me from feeling anything wonderful about the holidays, since I couldn't really feel connected to anyone except my immediate family. (Guilt! Guilt! Why aren't two kids, a husband and a dog enough? Who needs an extended family???)
In the past two years I've come to realize that I do have an extended family, and we are in close and regular communications. They are the community of the Net.
Glee, my friend and writing partner, talks to me via email almost daily. She sends jokes, shares her experiences travelling as NETCOM's Manager of Information Services, tells me news almost as soon as it happens about about the exploits of her boys.
Mike, a "paranoid Computer Security Type" from Oklahoma, not only talks over with me new Internet technology, but shares with me the joys and troubles of his family, including his wife with a terminal illness and his most delightful cat. He flings jokes at me and I send back notes about life on the corporate rollercoaster.
Robbie, a prospector in the Australian Outback who keeps in touch with the world with a cellular modem and laptop, tells me fables about opals and gold and The Great Barrer Reef. We exchange poetry about changes and being in a new country and stories about our first-graders.
Sabrina, a midwife, tells me birth stories, helps me hunt up references both on and off the Net, and critiques my Web page design.
Wander and I drag ourselves back to work from the wonders of name theory, philosophy of life and the reasons for the magic in everyday things, and gossip about our friends and playmates.
David tells me yet again why he hasn't finished my shoes, and makes me laugh in the middle of the day with non sequitors and outrageous flirting.
Angharad and I exchange recipes from the Middle Ages and I take shameful advantage of her wonderful databases and on-line library when I need a reference now and not next week when I can get to the library.
Some of us are lucky enough to have most of the family electronically connected. I've got two of three sisters on the Net, two brothers-in-law, a nephew, a daughter, and an ex-husband.
I could go on. Anyone who's navigated the Net for even a very short time could. In a very real sense, the people of the Net, our on-line communities, are our extended family. Many of them we'll never meet in person, only as lines on the screen (or in Webbed pictures, if we're lucky).
Let me tell you some stories that convince me that the Internet, instead of isolating us behind our computer screens, is creating a community of caring friends and family.
My friend Glee's husband, Frank, was a most amazing man-programmer, teacher, father, friend. Three years ago he was diagnosed with cancer. Glee turned to her friends and contacts on the Net, and found medical information, support groups, people to help with financial planning and legal matters. And she found loving friends who were accessible without regard to time zones, work schedules, or physical location.
Frank was able to keep working for a long time after his illness became acute, because he could use a computer that connected him to the exceptional University of Michigan campus network right from his bedside in the UM Hospital. And we could talk to him daily, keep him involved with the details of life around him, and be reassured about him the same way. Friends and former students from all around the world got in touch. They came to closure with this most beloved man through the medium of the Internet.
Judy's first baby is due in January. Her mom and dad are both dead, and her only brother lives in Canada. Her husband is on duty in Eastern Europe, and she hasn't seen him in several months. Her friends on the newsgroups have not only talked over her pregnancy day by day, but one of the folks in Europe found a way to get email from her husband, Steve, forwarded over the Internet to Judy. They now talk almost daily, instead of the infrequent letters she got from him via military mail.
Sandy, a labor assistant who lives within about 50 miles of Judy, has volunteered to be her coach for the birth in case Steve can't get back. They met in person for the first time in the parking lot at the childbirth ed classes, but they had been exchanging email for weeks, and felt like they'd known each other for years.
Brendan Kehoe, author of Zen and the Art of the Internet, had a terrible car accident the morning of December 31, 1993. He was hospitalized, in a coma, and initial reports said that the injury was in the part of the brain that controls language functions. It was thought this talented programmer and writer might not be able to speak again. E-mail bulletins began to go out. Electronic mailing lists were formed.
Jeffrey Osier, Brendan's roommate, went from California to Pennsylvania to help Brendan and his family, and almost immediately someone volunteered a network connection to help him stay in touch. Their mutual employer, Cygnus Support, put up public information files and mail reflectors so people could get automatic updates pulled from Jeffrey's messages back to Cygnus.
I handled mail from hundreds of people sending good wishes to Brendan, many of whom knew him only from his book and his online presence in newsgroups and mailing lists. Much of it was from people who, like him, had suffered closed-head trauma. Some of them had found that the Internet was a godsend: they could communicate effectively even when they had lost the power to speak. We discovered, once again, what we had always known: The most important use of the network is to communicate. To make the connection between people, and let them share information, feelings, and concern for one another.
As this year draws to close, I invite you to become part of the greater extended family of the Internet. Come and talk to us, and discover how much we can really do for one another.
Pat is co-author with Glee Harrah Cady of the new guide to NETCOM's Netcruiser, Exploring the Web with NetCruiser. (Check it out at the Prima Publications Web site.) She also consults for Intel, and for Lloyd Internetworking, an Internet consulting firm and dial-up Internet provider located in Cameron Park. You can reach her via email or via the Web.