麻豆传媒

I DATE my real arrival on the Net to the day in 1992 that I received, by e-mail, the story of the exploding whale, which I promptly posted to a conference called dead-granny on the Surbiton-based conferencing system, CIX. If you want to see it, it鈥檚 still there, in the roof-rack topic. The story is about a local TV broadcast which reported the tale of a dead whale washed up on an Oregon beach, smelling to high heaven. The highway patrol decided to remove it by blowing it up, assuming that seagulls would eat the small chunks that would no doubt result from this procedure. Naturally, it didn鈥檛 work the way it was supposed to 鈥� The explosion scattered large lumps of putrid whale over spectators and countryside, spreading the putrid smell far and wide.

J. C. Herz reports this story, which she found in alt.urban.folklore, about 30 pages into her book, by which time you should be having a thoroughly good time reading about her life in cyberspace. Herz was a student at Harvard, putting off studying for her exams by playing happily on the Net, when one day she realised the threat that graduation posed: the termination of her Internet account. We never find out what she did to escape this dread fate, but assume it was landing the contract for this book.

She is the kind of woman I鈥檇 like to run into more often in cyberspace. When a persistent Internet Relay Chat messager asks her, 鈥淭an in teh nude?鈥�, after he finds out she lives in Florida, she doesn鈥檛 scream for the Net police or claim harassment. No, she advises him, 鈥淏rush up on your one-handed typing.鈥�

Surfing on the Internet is full of stories like these, as Herz rolls through the public spaces of the Internet, MOOs, IRC, Usenet pulling out the best bits. Don鈥檛 think of this as an easy job: Usenet alone produces hundreds of megabytes a day of what Herz calls 鈥渃hurning textscape鈥�. In between forays, she graduates from Harvard, moves to Florida, and guzzles an awful lot of coffee and highly sugared cereal.

But this is the kind of book we all want to write: cyberspace for people who are never going to go there, the kind of vicarious experience that a good travel writer gives people 鈥� the feel of exotic locales without actually having to give up showers and eat the strange food. If you鈥檙e not a Net user yourself you鈥檒l find some of the terms unfamiliar, but think of it as reading science fiction, and relax. There is a glossary if you get really stuck; frustratingly, however, she doesn鈥檛 include addresses for any of the sites she visits for would-be followers. Even finding her e-mail address requires close attention to detail.

The Net 鈥� or just Net as Herz sometimes quasi-religiously calls it 鈥� is what you make it, like the world at large. Herz finds fellow Barney-haters, hangs out in the cyberspace bar somewhere in the bowels of a computer at the University of Hertfordshire, poses as a gay man on the #gaysex IRC chat channel, plays fantasy roles on interactive games known as MUDs, finds a home on Mindvox, one of the oases of cyberspace, and samples meditation on the Zen MOO, where she gets bounced for restlessness.

She also pulls out a few oft-reported tales: watching the stocks in Coke machines across the world, and reading the ramblings of those who track the comings and goings of alien visitors. Is there really Coke at the end of the Finger command? She鈥檚 not sure. But that鈥檚 part of the charm.

鈥淭he Net doesn鈥檛 care that I don鈥檛 take it seriously,鈥� she muses a third of the way through. 鈥淲hen I鈥檓 tired I can relax with it, and it鈥檒l make me laugh. When I鈥檓 gloomy, it鈥檚 always nutty enough to cheer me up. When I鈥檓 trawling through it, I always seem to find some unintentional nugget of wisdom. No matter that it comes from a basement dweller in another time zone or was, in fact, a typo.鈥�

This lack of sobriety is a common mistake among netheads; it鈥檚 why they are so puzzled when real-life law enforcement takes what they say seriously. Herz is shocked when her sojourn on Mindvox produces real Christmas cards.

But that enchantment is early on; later she鈥檚 clearly in trouble when she starts talking about the 鈥渙ffline world鈥�. Finally, having tried an online Net addicts鈥� support group, she unplugs her modem to get away from the mental noise. One imagines that since then she鈥檚 been through several iterations of this emotional roller coaster 鈥� just like the whale story, which cycles through cyberspace at telepathic speed every three months or so, towing detritus about copyright infringement in its wake. For that鈥檚 Herz鈥檚 one slip: she doesn鈥檛 report the origin of the whale story. It was a column by American humorist Dave Barry. It鈥檚 also true 鈥� I have a copy of the 11.7 megabyte video file that plays the original broadcast on a PC.