A day in the life of Emailer-talk circa 1998

Emailer-talk was a very social list. We would often go off-topic to discuss Mac issues during lulls over Emailer issues of the day. During one of these times, a new list mom decided to lay down the law with the list. The result was a modern day Boston Tea Party.

The following is an excerpt from an email sent by John Gilmore to the list shortly after hordes of subscribers began to defect:

“The Internet treats censorship as interference and routes around it”
Miss Vicky, you have killed a fine list … but it did not die, in a matter of but a few dozen minutes a new list has sprung up no different from the last list save for one major difference, YOU DON’T CONTROL IT!

Omar Shahine immortalized the revolt in his “Intro to Sociology” paper.

Omar Shahine
Intro to Sociology
Tuesday, April 28, 1998
A day in the life of Emailer-talk
On January 21, 1998 I received this email:

Subject: [ADMIN] Re: Emailer 2.0v3
Date: 1/21/98 5:11 PM
Received: 1/21/98 4:32 PM
From: Vicki Lindsay, EMAIL
To: Em@iler Talk, EMAIL
This is the last time I will repeat this. This list is to discuss Emailer not FileMakerPro, Outlook Express, Internet Explorer, or anything other application.
This list is not for discussing Claris policies; nor, should it be for repeating rumors.
As of this message, anyone who posts off-topic messages will be removed. No, if’s and’s or but’s. If I think it is off-topic, your history. End of story. No discussion.
If you don’t like, tuff.
Vicki Lindsay Emailer-Talk “List Mom”
SkyTouch Communications

What followed in the moments after was one of the most interesting social phenomena that I have experienced. Before I can tell the story of the Emailer-talk mailing list and what members of this list refer to as the “Vicki incident”, there is some background information that needs to be addressed.

The history of the Internet begins at the height of the cold war. What began at the Rand Corporation, America’s foremost military think tank, has evolved into one of the most profound mediums of communication that is available to millions of people around the world. The problem was simple, how could the United States develop a system or communications network that could withstand nuclear attack? Paul Baran, who conceived of an idea for a new kind of network, proposed the answer. He believed that instead of the traditional point to point network, where each chain on a network was dependant on a link, a new type of network could be built that would allow information to find its own path through a network even if that direct link was broken (1).

Baron’s idea went from conception to reality during the 1960s under the guidance and funding of the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) and grew into a small network (ARPANET) to promote the sharing of supercomputers amongst researches in the United States. In 1969, the first four hosts of the ARPANET were created connecting Stanford Research Institute, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. Although ARPANET was a success from the beginning, its true appeal was not the ability to access remote computers; it was email and as a result the ARPANET grew to become a high-speed digital post office (1).

In the late 70s and early 80s the ARPANET went international and commercial. Then in the 80s Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf developed a technology called Telecommunication Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). TCP/IP is the common language that allows computers to speak to each other. Concurrent with this development was the boom of personal computer industry popularized by Apple Computer whose founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created a “computer for the rest of us.” The Apple Macintosh introduced an inventive, mesmerizing desktop metaphor that introduced almost every modern interface element to the imagination: menus, icons, folders, and trash cans. To this day it remains the standard by which all interfaces are judged (2).

For the first time in our digital culture a machine had character. From that day till now, the success of Microsoft Windows and rise of Bill Gates’ fortune confirms the superiority of the desktop metaphor. These events and product evolutions set the stage for the break out year of the Internet. But before the Internet could break out one more important development occurred. In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee posted the first computer code of the World Wide Web. The ability to combine words, pictures, and sounds on Web Pages and to have them displayed on the millions of personal computers on the desks, laps, and homes of millions of people set in motion the events that have resulted in an explosion of a new medium. What started out as a Cold War concept to controlling the remains of a post-nuclear society has evolved into the Information Superhighway. The Internet profoundly affects the world we live in today and has brought society together in the Information Age (2).

According to Steven Johnson in The Interface Culture, “the internet is once again allowing strangers to interact with one another; though this time without the violence and drudgery of the Industrial Revolution”( ). In essence the Internet allows for the development of virtual communities created indiscriminate of gender, color, race, age or any other social or physical characteristic.

I am a member of many physical and social communities and groups. I am a Georgetown University student and as a result belong to specific groups. Most of my associations with people are determined by factors that are not in my control. However, there is one community that I belong to where I do not know the faces behind the words, and I am a net-citizen of this community called the Internet.

I have been using a computer since the 4th grade and was first introduced to the concept of online community through America Online (AOL). However, I was not introduced to the Internet until my freshman year at Georgetown University in the fall of 1994. Since then I have embraced this amazing resource yet it was not until my sophomore year that I was an active user. Until then my activities on-line were limited to emailing and forwarding messages to friends around campus; I had no real reason to use email beyond campus. In the fall of my sophomore year I purchased a program called Claris Emailer. Claris is a software company that is owned by Apple Computer, and in 1995, it purchased Emailer from a start-up company called Fog City software. It was truly a revolutionary product because it allowed fellow Macintosh users to connect to various on-line services like Compuserve, AOL, RadioMail, and any Internet provider to send and receive email. Emailer was the first universal inbox and outbox that delivered the convenience and the real promise of an email application that had a wonderful interface. Much like the Macintosh user interface hid the drudgery and ugliness of previous computer incarnations, Claris Emailer provided a unique and elegant approach to communicating with others. Many people look at computers as tools and applications to accomplish a task, but there are many people out there that use computers in many more ways. They need to know how and why a computer works and how to make things work better. I am one of those people, and as a result of my desire to learn more about this program, I joined a mailing list called Emailer-talk.

A mailing list is essentially a group distribution list. Once an individual subscribes to a mailing list you are allowed to send messages to the list. When a message is sent to the list everyone that is subscribed to the list receives a copy. As a result you do not know who the messages are going to, but anyone who is a subscriber can read the message and choose to respond to the message in which case the entire list of subscribers will also see the response. The benefit of such a list is obvious: other people can offer their assistance and answer questions that you cannot. I initially joined the list because I wanted to know more about Claris Emailer.

What I did not know is that over a period of 2 and 1/2 years I would get to know the personalities and intricacies of many people. The list has developed into a community of individuals who interact on a daily basis. The list is run by SkyTouch communications, which was founded in 1992 with the explicit purpose of developing innovative, high-quality, personal computer software solutions. Eric Thauvin, the founder of SkyTouch, hosts this list and was the original list administrator or “List Mom.” The administrator is responsible to make sure the topic does not drift or people are not abrasive to each other. They may reprimand people by removing them from the list.

Unlike many other lists, Emailer-talk frequently drifts off-topic. There are many reasons for this; sometimes issues surface where a subscriber can offer some unique perspective on a computing issue that no one else can, or some one can offer advice to another subscriber, or some people may feel it is necessary to talk about grammar and sentence structure. However, one of the reasons I joined Emailer-talk was that it was the first time in my life that I could actually talk to the creators and testers of a program, and the amazing thing is, they listened to me. It made me feel like I was a part of something, mainly the evolution and changes of a product. We could ask questions like “why is this button in the right corner of the window and not the left corner?” or say things like “I hate this feature”. For many, this was the initial appeal to staying on as a subscriber. I was truly impressed by the dedication and effort of the members of the Emailer team that worked at Claris. With the second release of the program it was clearly evident that they were listening. This year, Claris Emailer version 2.0 went on to win a prestigious award given out annually by MacWorld Magazine. However, shortly after, Apple Computer re-absorbed Claris and the entire development team either left Apple or was assigned to new projects. As a result, the Emailer-talk list was subjected to an enormous volume of email that our new “List Mom”, Vicki Lindsay, did not like one bit.

The actions of Vicki’s words in the email she sent to the list members did not show an understanding or respect for the community many of us felt we are a part of. In response to her email, Jud Spencer, the lead programmer, of Emailer, wrote:

I know this isn’t my place any longer. But, this list is like a
coffee-house, people gather to discuss events of the day as it pertains to a common topic. They just don’t come here to drink coffee. Many have been here longer than the term “listmom” has been in existence. If this list were purely for the discussion of Emailer features/bugs and not its future, I doubt anyone would stick around. In my opinion the future of Emailer is very pertinent to this list.

Many people felt that if valuable members of the list were no longer going to remain then they did not want to be a part of the list anymore. Others simply did not like the attitude and actions of Ms. Lindsay and unsubscribed as well. In a matter of hours after Ms. Lindsay’s email something amazing happened. Tom Carstensen, a member of the list, created his own Emailer-talk for those who wished to continue participating in our on-line community. In the first hour of Tom’s Emailer-talk there were 35 subscribers and many remained on both lists for the following days while others went back to the old list once Eric Thauvin returned as list administrator having relieved Ms. Lindsay of her former duties.

It was amazing to witness the reaction of the list members to Ms. Lindsay’s email. The willingness of Tom to host a new list and the reactions of the members put many things in perspective. Just as Paul Baran envisioned 30 years ago, the Internet is not a direct link from one point or person to another, but a fishnet where information finds its own path even if a section of network had been destroyed. The following is an excerpt from an email sent to the list shortly after hordes of subscribers began to defect:

John Gilmore immortalized these words:
“The Internet treats censorship as interference and routes around it”
Miss Vicky, you have killed a fine list … but it did not die, in a matter of but a few dozen minutes a new list has sprung up no different from the last list save for one major difference, YOU DON’T CONTROL IT!

For me this statement puts the actions and events into perspective. Many of us reacted in the same way: we were upset and mad, and exercised our rights to leave the old list in order to continue interacting without heavy handed intervention by a person who made no effort to understand our list and its culture. As result of these actions I conducted a survey via email of those who left Emailer-talk to join Tom’s list. I asked 30 individuals to participate and 12 expressed an interest. I have received 11 completed survey’s to date.

I asked the volunteers some simple questions about the Internet: how it influences society, why they left the list and some demographic questions. The range of the respondent’s ages was from 22 to 60+ and all were residents of the US except for one individual from Canada and another from New Zealand. All the respondents were male except for two females and all but one were subscribers to Emailer-talk for over a year, some as long as the product’s life (late 1993). All of the respondents joined the list to learn more about Claris Emailer. One respondent stated that he joined Emailer-talk “to get opinions and tips (and to give them). Emailer seemed such a nice, almost revolutionary way to handle mail…” This statement captured much of the feeling and atmosphere of the list. There were many people on the list that enjoyed helping others by offering their knowledge and willingness to learn more.

In response to a question asking why the respondents left the Emailer-talk list after the “Vicki incident” someone replied: “I’ve made a lot of good friends on the Emailer-talk list. I’ve learned more about computer related stuff there than on any of the other lists I’ve been on. Tom’s list is a way to continue the conversation.” The survey also asked the respondents to comment on this statement: “The Internet treats censorship as interference and routes around it.” In response one person said, “I definitely think it’s true. The Emailer list almost vanished overnight after the “Miss Vicki” episode. The ease of creating new lists makes it very difficult for tyrants to rule.” It is interesting to witness the responses that people have to interference, especially in a medium that is still in its infancy. To some the Internet is the Holy Grail of communication and will have no part in stifling its movement.

The Internet consists of many technologies right now. Our society is bombarded with buzzwords that have little or no meaning to a vast majority of people. Things like VRML, XML, cyberspace, information superhighway, net-bots, and HTML are discussed by many net-savvy users, yet for many the most important buzz-word is still the written word. Largely unchanged through the centuries this is one method of communication that has flourished in the Internet Age. As humans we are used to dealing with people, faces, and we learn a lot from body language and expression. On the Internet the only thing that separates individuals from each other is the computer interface that allows them to interact in a virtual world. Distance is no longer a barrier separating people with common interests and experiences.

I have learned a lot from my experiences on the Emailer-talk list. What started out as a curiosity in a computer application has transformed into a new method of social interaction. David Orgel, a long time subscriber to Emailer talk wrote, “Emailer-Talk is the first instance of a real Internet-based community that I encountered. I’ve subsequently started my own mailing list, consisting largely of [Emailer-talk] subscribers, and this has become a very tightly knit community, sort of a “virtual commune.” I find it fascinating and encouraging that it’s possible to get to know people well and become close to them, solely by means of the written word.”

Vicki Lindsay failed in her duties for one particular reason. She made no attempt to understand or learn the culture and atmosphere of the list. Much as a foreigner may visit a new country or culture and fail to gain an appreciation for its differences and offer no respect of their way of life, Vicki treated the list and its members as something she could control. Many people realize that the best way to gain the respect of another person is to make an effort to understand and appreciate the person’s culture. Ms. Lindsay failed in this way and what resulted was a reaction that was appropriate in both the virtual world and the real world. When asked why so many people left the list to join Tom’s new list, Jurgen Schaub responded, “as a real world analogy, a bunch of us are sitting in a coffee house, and the waitress gets really rude. A few of the more animated members decide to go to the other coffee place down the street. We all get up and leave.”

For me this is the first experience of a real world social reaction in the virtual world. The Internet is proving to be a powerful force in our lives and social experiences. The traditional group is no longer limited to any continent or physical separation and as a result we will have to learn how to be responsible members of this large community. The experiences I have had on Emailer-talk reveal just how dynamically a group of people can interact. The list continues to amaze me: we laugh, fight, complain, rejoice and talk to each other and as a result I feel that the most powerful method of communication is still the written word.

Acknowledgements:
Timothy Bates
Lynda Bates
Anonymous
Craig L. Stevenson
Edward B. Hanna
David Orgel
Dan Dixon
Dan Crevier
Jurgen Schaub
The Claris Emailer Team
All the list members of Emailer-talk

FWIW, I’m Anonymous and I still belong to one of the spin off lists that was created from this revolt.

After college, Omar worked with the MacBU on Outlook Express and then Entourage. He is now Senior Program Manager Lead for Hotmail.