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       The following article is from the Review Section of the New
       York Times of Sunday 26 August l990.

       It is headed:
       PROGRAMMED FOR LIFE AND DEATH, written by John Markoff.

       This spring a California man symbolically took his life by
       using a computer program to seek out and destroy the
       contributions he had made over to the years to a continuing
       electronic conversation run by a computer group called the
       Well. Several weeks later, he followed this "virtual"
       suicide by killing himself in the real world.

       Blair Newman had been one of the most active members of the
       Well, a five-year-old electronic community that is operated
       out of the Whole Earth Review, a publisher in Sausalito,
       Calif., with roots in the l960's counterculture. Several
       thousand people in the Bay Area regularly call up the Well
       for an electronics typewritten chat, and they frequently meet
       face to face in more conventional gatherings.

       Mr Newman, a 43-year-old veteran of the personal computer
       industry, was such an enthusiastic-- some would say
       obsessive--user of the Well that many of his friends knew
       him only electronically. They describe him as a flamboyant
       insomniac who could be counted on for stimulating and sometime
       infuriating late-night conversation. But he was also known
       for bouts of depression.

       After his simulated suicide in May, many members of the
       community dispatched angry messages complaining that they
       had been wronged. Some believed Mr Newman's writing, stored
       on a computer disk, were the property of the community and
       not his to destroy.

       It was after this dispute that Mr Newman took his life.

       "For him to be done in the virtual world was to be done--
       period," said John Perry Barlow, a participant in the group
       who is a lyricist for the Grateful Dead.

       Some may take Mr Newman's story as that of a disturbed
       computer addict who used technology to withdraw from the
       world. But others see the experience in a different light, as
       a glimpse of a future in which computers change the way
       people live and work, and ultimately the way they die.

       In recent years computer networks have been emerging as a new
       kind of community unlimited by geography. While members can
       be spread across the world, the ease of communication can
       engender an intimacy more akin to a small 19th-century
       village than a 20th-century suburb.

       Some sociologists see a dark side to all this.

       "There is a notion of avoiding the her-and-now society," said
       Todd Gitlin, a sociologist at the University of California at
       Berkley."Part of what's scary is that there is a blankness in
       her-and-now society that leads people to prefer these virtual
       communities."

       But others see the networks as a way to overcome the forced
       anonymity of modern life. While the telephone shrank the
       world by permitting instantaneous one-to-one contact, and
       while radio and television have served as a one-way medium to
       broadcast information to millions, the computer has become a
       vehicle that allows hundreds of people of like values and
       interests to come together in small groups.

       Much of what has taken place was foreshadowed in a number of
       science fiction novels written in the last 15 years. In his
       1981 novel "True Names" -- which has a small but devoted
       following among network enthusiasts--Vernor Vinge describes a
       fictional world in which a small computer underground
       illicitly occupies parts of a powerful global network. In the
       story, technology has become so advanced that it is possible
       to simulate highly realistic fantasy worlds and move about
       and interact with people who may be located thousands of
       miles away.

       A computer-science graduate student has recently created a
       less elaborate simulated universe called Tinymud, which
       exists within a nationwide computer network called Internet.
       A program permits dozens of people connected to the network
       through personal computers or work stations to create
       simulated personas and use them to explore a fantasy world
       that the players themselves recreate.

       Similasr to role-playing games lke Dungeons & Dragons, the
       game lacks the dazzling graphics associated with Mr Vinge's
       story. Tinymud's universe consists entirely of written
       descriptions, and wandering through it is like reading a
       novel-- or like being a character in one. And in a meta-
       fictional twist, each player can also play author, adding
       new regions for other players to explore.

       In recent months the game has become a fad on college
       campuses. By signing on to the network, one can travel
       through an interactive text filled with details of the
       geography of the Boston area, or electronically visit the
       Yale University campus.

       In addition to shrinking distances and stretching
       imaginations, computer networks also provide anonymity. Such
       an environment can lead to behavior that would not be readily
       tolerated in real life. Recently, in a posting on a computer
       network, a Wesleyan University student complained about
       sexual harassment in the Tinymud game.

       "Just because my character is female and has a vaguely
       attractive description, and just because I choose to flirt
       with some people, some jerk thinks my sexuality is public
       property," the student wrote. (It is not known whether the
       character's creator was male or female.)

       Some day electronic communities could be futuristic, high-tech
       paradises. But for now they function more as primitive
       societies, still groping for social codes.

       Mr Barlow, the lyricist, said he once believed that computer
       conferences would never become real communities until they
       could address sex and death in ritual terms.

       "Marriages and funerals are the binding ceremonies in real
       towns," he said, "but they have a hard time happening
       among the disembodied.

       In the case of Mr Newman, his friends have tried to assuage
       their grief what may be the first electronic funeral.
       Shortly after his death, they created a new computer file
       including all of his old writings, which it turns out, had
       been saved on a backup disk. They have also compiled a
       eulogy, hundreds of pages of testimonials available on the
       system. Included is this observation from Mitchell D. Kapor
       the founder of the Lotus Development Corporation and now
       chairman of On Technology.

       "He was a unique character, and perhaps the limitations of
       space and time were just too much for someone with so many
       ideas and inspirations."

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