In reality, however, much vaster resources of untapped information still exist -- whole alternate oceans. There may, for instance be dozens of articles about the same activity which never use the term "toll fraud." Other sources may treat the subject matter from a radically different point of view. Mired in your instant and easy access, you may not ever see other sources, or even think to look for them.
Copying electronic text is a very simple matter. It's even simpler than copying software, and people feel far less compunction about copying text than they do about software piracy. In my opinion, no textual disclaimers about "site licenses" or "copyright" can stop people from swiftly cutting-and-pasting some bit of juicy gossip and electronically passing or faxing it to a friend. Even the armed might and omnipresent wiretaps of the KGB or the Romanian Securitate couldn't stop street gossip. Giving the reader the powers of editor, publisher and distributor turns all electronic text into potential street gossip.
This fog, this unstoppable miasma of info, may be bad news for tyrants -- or at least for tyrants of an older and creakier breed, anyhow. But no silver lining comes without a cloud. The confidentiality and accuracy of electronic text -- whether private e-mail or a general publication -- cannot be trusted. Even encrypting one's e-mail, a practice growing in popularity, won't stop the receiver from decrypting it, reading the plaintext, and *then* tampering with it and spreading the news to anyone he chooses. Expecting electronic text to retain its form and remain within a narrow channel is like trying to ink a fine line on a paper towel. Everything blots and spreads.
As a corollary, if you have a wide circle of acquaintance in cyberspace -- and a narrow circle of acquaintance isn't much use -- then you are likely to receive the same breaking news fifteen or twenty times through fifteen or twenty different sources. This is annoying. It also tends to overwhelm your native incredulity, for even the goofiest fifth-hand rumor no longer seems incredible if it's repeated fifteen times.
As it travels from hand to hand, electronic text can become corrupted. It's amazing, really, how little deliberate forgery goes on -- it would seem absurdly easy to invent horribly incriminating diatribes and pass them off as the work of others, and yet I've never known this to happen. However, a lot of "editing" of other people's electronic text does goes on, usually well-meant, but often destructive of context and sense.
Let's turn to the pressing peculiarities of online discussion groups and bulletin board systems. "Discussions" on bulletin board systems bear even less relation to actual conversation than e-zines do to actual magazines. I offer as evidence the puzzling fact that there has never been an online discussion of science fiction one tenth so enlightening and interesting as hanging out in the corner of Kate 'n' Damon's living room. In fact, I've never found an online "discussion" of science fiction that was even as tepidly interesting as the usual SFFWA suite at a regional convention. The closest the online world comes to a workable discussion of science fiction is the blather on GEnie, which is as paralyzingly tedious as the SFWA BULLETIN, *without the editing.* And while SF writers spawn like salmon out of regional writing scenes, I'm unaware of any who have emerged from an entirely online writers' circle. There may be some -- I've been expecting them for years -- but I've never seen any. I question whether it's possible.
Since there is no lack of science fiction fans and writers online, and since people online are no stupider than people offline, I attribute this lifelessness in SF online discussion to the inherent limits of the medium. Bulletin board services are best suited to bulletins. They serve best in distributing brief bits of commentary that could fit snugly on a 3X5 index card. In an ongoing bulletin board flurry of commentary, any piece of text longer than a couple of screens produces headachy impatience and a kind of vertigo. Encountering a serious, well-reasoned essay in the flow of more-or-less idle chatter produces an effect like a jetskier hitting an iceberg.
Bulletin boards excel at minor aspects of social housekeeping, such as swapping addresses, spreading headlines, breeding rumors, and, especially, exchanging insults. Bulletin board messages are not genuinely epistolary in nature. They are better compared to answering machine messages, CB radio squibs, souvenir postcards, or stand-up comedy performance complete with hecklers.
This brings us to the matter of "flaming," those sudden eruptions of ranting ill-will so common online. Many online veterans declare flaming to be "juvenile." Flaming, however, knows no age group. Flamers do tend to tone it down after a while, but it's not because of their growing emotional maturity. It's because they've become inured to the socially ulcerating, inherent constraints of the medium. And it's surprising how often a livid, ranting, hateful flame will burst from some previously somnolent user, someone with a lot of experience who seemingly ought to know better.
In many ways it's a source of raw astonishment that anything even resembling a polite community can exist among anonymous strangers who are swapping electronic text on screens. This is social interaction with a desperate flatness of affect. There's no voice, no pitch, stress, timing or emphasis in online commentary. There's no body language, no sight, smell, or touch, no pheromones, no breath of life. The best emotional signal one can send online is the skeletal revenant of a disarming smile: the graphically repugnant "emoticon": :-)
There's supposed to be a lot of difference between the hurtful online statement "You're a moron," and the tastefully facetious statement "You're a moron :-)". I question whether this is really the case, emoticon or no. And even the emoticon doesn't help much in one's halting interaction with the occasional online stranger who is, in fact, gravely sociopathic. Online communication can wonderfully liberate the tender soul of some well-meaning personage who, for whatever reason, is physically uncharismatic. Unfortunately, online communication also fertilizes the eccentricities of hopeless cranks, who at last find themselves in firm possession of a wondrous soapbox that the Trilateral Commission and the Men In Black had previously denied them.
I've never gotten a piece of hate e-mail. I've never been seriously harassed or threatened by e-mail. I don't understand why not, and in fact I fully expect it to happen someday. In the meantime, as with the rarity of e-forgery, I marvel at the winsome goodwill of the online community.
However, I've gotten quite a lot of e-mail that, by all rights, should have been written in crayon by a person whom a kindly society had deprived of sharp objects. It can often take several exchanges of e-mail to bring forth a realization that would have taken perhaps seven seconds of contact in real life: *this person is unhinged.* The effect can be disquieting. (Actually, in my personal experience it's usually more disquieting for the unhappy wretch e-mailing me, as most amateur madfolk fare rather poorly when exposed to a science fiction professional -- but the general principle still holds.)
E-mail has great immediacy. Its movement is very swift, electronically swift, and yet it does not intrude into the texture of one's life the way a phone call too often does. You read e-mail at a time when you are ready to read it, a time when you are mentally prepared for the experience. This is a very great advantage.