Q: How many modems do you have here?

There are 30 modems, and these two boxes here are the Internet connection. So you can see it's all pretty small -- a box sits under my desk [486 PC], with the hard drive sitting here. So all of Echo, this big huge thing, is just this...

How do you explain to non-technical people what Echo is?

Echo is the new community. So, where people used to get together and hang out in person -- university people would hang out in coffee shops, housewives would hang out on porches -- now people hook up their computers to the phone network, and hang out online. That's what it's replacing -- those old physical, face-to-face networks are now electronic. And that's the need that it's answering -- that need to connect to other people, just to, on a day-to-day basis, swap stories. Nothing necessarily earth- shattering, unless something earth- shattering is going on...

And up until recently, it's been mostly men online.

Except for Echo, it continues to be men, mostly, in cyberspace. I think it's 90 percent male everywhere else.

How would you define "cyberspace?"

Someone said cyberspace is that place that you go when you pick up the telephone. That's a good answer. But what it looks like is a very individual thing. In fact, that might be an interesting thing -- to go person to person: "When you get online, where do you go? What do you picture in your head?" There definitely is that sense when people sit down at their computer and log into Echo, they don't feel like they're "here" anymore; they feel like they've literally gone someplace. One user said that it used to be that his computer was this box that stood alone; now, when he hooks up to Echo it becomes this box full of people! And that's what it feels like. Except I'm here, so Echo's here, but I still feel like I'm going "in there" somehow.

Your main goal is to get more women online...

Well, now I've kind of succeeded with that, so I'm starting to move in other directions. Except, we have this all-girls school coming online, and it's junior high and high school. And that I'm excited about, because it's not unusual to see teenage boys online, but I've never once seen a teenage girl online. So this'll be really cool, to see a bunch of them there, and just to see how they act.

How do kids act online?

Elsewhere they're kind of bratty. On Echo they behave themselves. But what I like about them is, they're a lot less shy. Adults get online, and for the most part, come out slowly...which is fine, that's how I am too. They just start posting a little bit, then more and more and more. Whereas kids just don't have that kind of shyness. I guess because they think they know it all. And they get online, and they just start posting all over the place. Hopefully that's what's going to happen.

It's very satisfying to see women posting all over the place, fearlessly... There's definitely -- for instance, I'm 37, and I notice women that are in my age range tend to "lurk" a lot more than women in their 20s. Women in their 20s post a lot more, they're a lot more fearless about it. So I'm just guessing -- it could go either way - that girls who are teenagers would post even more.

Are you a nerd?

Actually, I love that question, because I like just being able to dispell the image... Do I look like a nerd? Do I act like a nerd? I like being the example of someone like me is online. It's not all these geeky people that people imagine... Some of them fit that image, yeah, but they're actually, I would say, a minority on Echo. It's not mostly computer engineer types on Echo, it's mostly artists, writers...

Do you spend a lot of time online?

No, actually, I don't, which is a shame. I mean, I'm always online, but I'm always doing administrative things, like answering people's questions, and fixing things in the system. I don't get to do a lot of what everyone else gets to do, which is to get online and talk to people, and participate in conferences... For instance, I'm a movie addict, and there's this really great movies and TV conference online. But I don't get to read what people are saying -- what they post. I just don't have time, with all the administrative stuff.

And you get "Yo'ed" a lot.

Yes! And too much email! A lot of my day is just answering email, because I get, like 100 a day. And that's a lot. That's why, when you email me, you find you get, like, one-word answers from me,

You've gotten kind of famous doing this.

Well, in a very small circle

How do you find this new-found recognition?

I don't have to deal with it. My fame is, like, in cyberspace. So people don't come up to me in person. But it's funny that you ask that, because -- [She looks at her computer screen, where someone has just "Yo'ed" her.] Cool. Someone just got filmed this morning for Wall Street Journal TV, for how they use the Internet to get business. They came to me, and I gave them this guy's name. And it's national. National TV.

So it's not just you. People on Echo are getting interviewed.

Yeah, and it's really nice. I love being able to do stuff like this -- helping other people promote their stuff somehow, here in cyberspace. Because there are a lot of opportunities for that. It's so hot in the media right now. So about the fame thing, I'm actually -- I know you may not believe it, but -- I'm shy. I'm not after fame and glory and that kind of thing...

In fact, I want to be a writer. And one of the things I always said was great about writers is that they get to be famous without dealing with fame. Nobody knows for the most part what they look like. So you can have your cake and eat it too.

When I was starting Echo, a lot of people advised me to be very out there, and that I should have a lot to do with selling Echo rather than Echo the service itself. And I said, "No, it has nothing to do with me. It has to do with who gets online and the kinds of things that happen...That's the product, not me...." And then it just started happening accidentally. You know, people, when they interviewed me, they would photograph me. And I started getting bored with these photographs, because they were always these kind of business-y kind of things. So, starting with the Wired photograph, I just started changing that, so I could have fun with it too.

What kind of response did you get? Did you get asked for dates?

Yeah, but it was fun the way they did it. They were so polite. It was none of this, "Oh, I want you, I want you." It was extremely respectful, like, "I never write letters like this, I swear, but..." I didn't say yes to anyone. But it was flattering. It was very sweet. And a couple people asked me for posters! [Laughs] I said, "You've got to be kidding," because I thought they were kidding, but, no, they were perfectly serious. And I said no.

This was people on Echo?

No, this was people on the Internet, actually. I mean, some of them are now on Echo, yeah. Email was just pouring in from everywhere.

You had your email address in the article?

They actually got the address from Marisa's address, the woman who wrote the article. And she was forwarding all this stuff to me. She was getting email like, "Great article but, who was the woman in the photograph?" [She laughs.]

And in the Fortune article, there's a photograph of me in a red dress. And now I'm getting the young execs calling! Very different, very different tone.

What's your favorite conference on Echo?

Culture, and Movies and TV. That's what I was starting to bitch about, the fact that I participate in this stuff, There's this whole world that I feel so distant from...

We started with just five conferences. The idea was that we were so small, and there was so few people, that we didn't want to have tons of conferences, because they would feel very empty. So Culture was just supposed to be this catch-all for music, movies, TV -- lots of different subjects that fit under culture. But Culture was popular right from the start, and continues to be. And we keep moving stuff out of there. Like\, now there's a Movies and TV conference, there's a Books conference, there's a Media conference -- all these things that used to be in Culture....

Are there a lot of writers? What kind of people are on Echo?

A lot of writers -- because it is a writer's medium. Even if you're not a writer, you still have to feel comfortable expressing yourself that way -- it's all words. A couple of people... who came online, who weren't at all comfortable with writing to begin with, became so, from doing Echo. Like one guy who was a construction worker, and had never been near a computer. And he got into it, and now has improved. I hear that a lot...

It's a lot of writers, a lot of, you know, arts types, graphic artists, people that have worked in other mediums, but are now moving toward technology. Even if they're artists, everyone's moving toward technology.

Is it weird speaking to people in this kind of machine-mediated way?

No. But, you know, a lot of people try to figure out, "Who are these people who get online?" I don't even have to have them try it -- When I talk to people I can just tell immediately who "gets it, and who doesn't.

And those people who don't usually never do. Even when they try it, they see it, it just never clicks with them. But some people, just immediately, you just barely describe to them, and they know exactly what you're talking about. And so, a lot of people try to figure out, "Who are these people? What is inside of them that makes them just immediately grab to it?" And I think what it is, is, even if they're not an artist, it's definitely that "artist's soul"...

Because what it's about is expressing yourself, and connecting to other people. So, it's the kind of person that just wants to reach out, no matter what. So, like, they'll pick up the telephone, they'll write a story, they'll paint a picture. It's like, they don't care about the medium; to them it's just, "Oh, yes, this is just yet another way of connecting to people, and expressing yourself..."

So what's going to happen in the future? What after this?

I don't think it's going to change much. And I'm probably going to eat my words. But people keep talking about video and stuff, and I just think that that's always going to be like an added feature, rather than the main form of communicating. Something to add on. Like people on Echo, they go Chat sometimes, to try a different kind of communications. But it's just like, for the novelty, rather than the day-to day,,,

I think why this is so powerful is because of the distance. I don't think people want the video. It's the same reason why video telephones still don't take off. That makes them feel more inhibited.

What about the future of Echo?

I want Echo to get to about, maybe, 6000 people.

How many are there now?

1500. Maybe to 10,000. It's hard to say -- I don't know that it would work, with huge numbers of people. I think that the charm and the appeal is the fact that it's a manageable size. You know, like a small town, within the big city. I don't know. I watch the Well, to see how their growth affects the sense of community. And it seems to be working. And they're like four times the size of us now. And they've fallen off into different subcultures, within the big community...

Compuserve has its value, but it does not have, in my opinion, that sense of community. It's just too big. It feels more like a mall than a town. And that's not my interest. So the only direction I could go once Echo reaches its optimum size, is to start other Echos, in different parts of the world...

I was talking about Echo at a conference last week. And someone from England said, "What do you think would happen if you started something like this in England, taking into account the culture. Would it fly or wouldn't it? And I thought it would, since people in the U.K. are just generally considered more aloof, that they might jump at the opportunity to be more intimate, with that safe distance. I think that's why it works in New York too.

New Yorkers don't act like New Yorkers when they're online.

No, it's much more civilized... Not that New Yorkers aren't nice. I think that whole thing about people being rude and mean is nonsense. They're actually the nicest people in the world...

There definitely is, though, this -- what's it called -- like a gentle kind of hazing on the street. Like, people don't open up immediately necessarily, but...what's the word for that? It's almost like, a little dance that people have to go through before they open up...

Like a ritual, a rite of passage?

Yeah. Which does not exist online

What would be your ideal for Echo?

Well, the thing that I like to do, I'm always fooling around with the mix. And I'm trying to get different people online. I started out with women, and moving away from the strictly computer people, the engineers, that are online. I'm trying to get more people who are involved in the arts online.

We've got this new guy coming -- well, he's already online -- Charley Moulton, and he's a choreographer. He recently did a piece for the Joffrey Ballet. And one of his pieces was on PBS, part of the Serious Fun Festival at Lincoln Center. And he's going to be hosting a conference on Echo. And stuff like that is unheard of in the online world -- dancers and choreographers hosting electronic conferences. So I'm always trying to do things like that...

And I'm trying to get people of color online, because Echo's almost exclusively white. When I go to face-to-faces, if I see one, two, three people who are not white, that's a good night.

Do you think that's an economic kind of thing?

No, not in this case. For the big picture, yes. But for Echo, it's definitely the upper level of the economy. But there are plenty of people of color in that upper level, in New York. And yet they're not online, and I had no idea why...

There was a guy out in Brooklyn who had a network like Echo. I don't know what he's doing now. He called it the Blackboard, and it was for people of color. And whenever I was on, there was never more than one, two, three people online. He had just as much trouble as I did.

So there are other problems. Hardware problems...

[sighs] Makes me want to quit, hardware problems.

Is that just recent?

Well, we upgraded everything -- we put in a new machine, new operating system, and the Internet connection. And there's a bug in there... causing something called "kernel panics."

What is that?

Technically, I don't know. But the system all revolves around this kernel of information, that, every time the system comes up, it gives vital information to the system about configuration, what it looks like, what's there, how to behave, parameters, all these things...

And there's a problem in there somewhere, and we don't know what it is. We've just been step-by-step debugging it. So we're going to bring Novell into it, who owns Unix -- the version that we're using. And I hired another company that's literally going to take out the machine and everything, put in a loaner machine, and just take it apart, try to figure out what the problem is. It's a big deal, but we've tried pretty much everything, so I don't know what else to do...

I mean, it's not that bad, in that, when it crashes, I can bring it right back up. I mean, it could be worse. But it's very frustrating.

What about other problems. Problems with people online, ever?

Yeah. Yeah, all the time. I would say once every three months we have a crisis in the community. Uh, what was the last one? Oh, the last one was: We have private conferences -- we have one conference for women only, and on conference for men only...

There was, in the MOE conference -- that's the one for men only -- apparently some men talked about some women on Echo in not-very-flattering terms. So that was one problem, because that got out, so people were all upset. Then it was compounded by someone, I don't know who, downloaded the entire thread of discussion, and uploaded it to NYU, at ITP. And someone printed out, and it was being passed all around. So the second problem was that it's a private conference, and now it had become public. So people were all upset about that...

So we had two raging crises, that people were all upset about -- one, that men were saying, apparently really -- I don't know, because I never actually saw it. I kept asking people to send it to me; nobody ever did. To the point where I started to doubt the existence of this whole thread. But apparently it was really bad -- like, whatever they said was really bad. Then people were upset about the fact that, you know, this private discussion had become public...

Isn't it -- it sounds weird, but isn't it okay to say things like that in a private conference? I don't know exactly what was said...

That's my opinion. As bad as it was, I think, you know, what you say in private is private. I had someone read to me some of the things that were there. One thing was really bad, and I said, "Well, I think you owe the person an apology." But I don't think he was necessarily wrong to say it. But it got out, it was hurtful, and he owed them an apology...

And I also think that it's private, but not quite private. It's not like you and I having a conversation; it's still -- a lot of people can see it. So it's somewhere in between public and private. I think people need to be discrete, but at the same time... it's tough, it's a hard call isn't it?

Well, you make sure that people use their real names.

They have to use their real names.

A lot of systems don't do that. Why do you?

Because I wanted Echo to be a community. So I thought, one of the first things that was going to create that was for people to be who they really were. So that they would have to stand by what they say; they would have to be somewhat real. On a lot of systems, people like to play with personas, and they do that to a certain extent on Echo too, but at the same time, there's always their real name. The fact that, yes, this person is playing with this different personality, but it's a real person -- this is who they are, this is what they do with their life...

So, yes they can play. They can show that we all have many sides to us. But it's real. It's still real.

And this incident kind of illustrates that.

People take Echo very seriously. And when they get upset, they get, generally, very upset. These crises just show how real it is. If people didn't care, they wouldn't get bothered when these things happen. But they take it very seriously. And I've learned. It used to be, like, Echo was mine, and I would say, "Okay, we're going to do this, do this....

We have our first transsexual online.

Really?

It's posed a couple of interesting questions. The first one was, we have this mentoring program online, and I'm going to have it systemwide soon, but right now it's just available for women -- it's just women mentoring women. Because one of the things I've found is that women don't ask questions when they're involved; it's just like, they get online, they get frustrated, and they leave...

So, to get around that I started this mentoring program where you can go if you have problems. And it's worked very well, because they'll ask questions of their mentor. So, I have this woman, who's a transsexual, and, well, should I offer her a mentor. And I went, "Well, she's a woman, so, yes!" So I have. I asked her. She wanted one.

Hmm. Interesting mix of people. Compared to the Well, Echo seems to have a more close-knit community... and the Well has more technical conferences.

Yeah, in fact... people ask me the differences between the Well and Echo, and the computer conferences -- the technical conferences -- on the Well are very active, whereas they're just completely dead here... Here they're more entry-level, too. There's more explaining to people who have questions.

We just got a new host for the Telecommunications conference, so hopefully that'll pick up the activity there. It's Simona Nass, and she's the president of SEA, the Society for Electronic Access. So we'll see what she does with that conference. But usually, the conferences are that are really active have a live host; a conference will come back to life. It may not be that the people aren't interested in the subjecct, but the conference just needs someone to whip up enthusiasm...

Well, your background is in telecommunications.

Sort of. My background is actually in the fine arts. Mostly photography, but painting, drawing, you know, the whole bit. But mostly photography. And when I moved back to -- I was going to school up in Boston -- I couldn't get a job. The first person who offered me a job was a telecommunications company. And they trained me in how to hook up computers around the country to a central site, in New York...

And I was good at it. And it was good money. They just kept giving me more and more money, so I kept getting sucked into it. But I definitely felt trapped. When I came to ITP, I was not happy with where my life was. I was in corporate America -- I was working for Mobil Oil at that time. I was pretty unhappy. So, it worked out well -- I found an "out" through ITP.

When did you start teaching there?

Just last year [1992]. This is the second time I've taught the course [Exploring Electronic Networks].

Do you find that your students from your classes tend to stay online after the class is over?

Yeah. We're all friends. It's nice, because, while I was the teacher, I was the teacher. ; now it's much more comfortable.

How do you like teaching?

I love it. I was a teacher when I first graduated, when I was in my early 20s -- I taught photography at a couple of places. And I didn't like it then...At the time, I remember that if somebody was not into it, I was not in the least bit interested in inspiring them. Like, if you were excited, then it was fun to teach you. But if you weren't, you know, just don't come to class. I just didn't want to deal with those people. And also, teaching an art class is difficult, because there's a lot more ego involved. I just didn't like the experience.

But with this -- the way [the class] came about, is, ITP has an account with Echo. So every semester I would come in and do a lecture to Comm Lab, and show everyone how to get around on Echo. And just, as the years went by, it became more and more fun. Because the students were changing over time -- brighter. I don't want to say this, because I know that the past students will hear it. But it's just that they got brighter... I could tell just by the questions that people were asking -- they just kept getting better and better. And people were more savvy, and more thoughtful. Just a lot more fun to be with. So I said, "Well, can I teach a course, please?' And they said yes...

You grew up in New York. Where?

On Long Island. In this beautiful place in Huntington... we had two acres of woods behind our house, and not too many houses on each street; they're all set back. It's quite idyllic. And I hated it. I hated every minute of it. I couldn't wait to leave. I was bugging my parents thw whole time I was growing up -- "Can't we live in Manhattan, can't we live in Manhattan? It's awful here, it's awful here, it's awful here." And I left as soon as I could...

And now, when I go back, I look, and I can see that it was actually beautiful. and I was very lucky to have grown up where had grown up. We had this lovely home, this beautiful place. It's too bad I didn't appreciate it at the time.

Then you've lived in New York almost all your life then, huh?

Yeah. I went to school in Florida briefly. And then I lived for two years in Cambridge, while I went to college. But that't it; I've been here since then...

How do you like life in the Village?

I like it. I've lived here always, ever since I came to New York, I've always lived in the Village. It's the most human part of the city.

Do you have favorite places to go in the city?

Well, one thing I do everyday is, I'll walk for a few hours. I'm literally like a ghost, haunting the streets. I just start walking, wandering in and out all the way through the Village, then I head downtown, west. I especially like the Wall Street area and the financial district, because it's very cavernous and old, like these crumbling buildings next to these very new buildings. And I also like the fact that I can just walk around leisurely, while everyone else is kind of, going at a hundred miles per hour. In fact that's what a lot of my book is based on, these wanderings that I have.

Tell me about it.

Well, it's without a title at the moment, but I call it "Obituaries"...

It's about this woman who sees angels. And her boyfriend is leaving her. And she gets this idea that if she doesn't find an angel, that he can see also before he leaves, she's going to explode. The whole book is her going around Manhattan, and finding angels. And it's all very magical and lovely. But she brings them home, and he never sees them, so she starts moving further and further away from the realm of real people, and into this angelic realm, and it gets kind of dark...

But I get that from my walking. It's very hard to explain, except I try to in my book. But when you walk around, you just sort of hit certain pieces of the city that -- you get a certain view, or a certain smell, and it's like going back into time. It's almost like this place that gets soaked over and over and over again with human experience. And there's still, like, a reverberation. And I know it's not unnattural, because I hear lots of people saying this...

I have wanted to be a published writer since I was nine years old -- I've been writing since I was nine years old, and I've never been this close. And I've wanted it to be made into a movie. The whole time I was sriting it, I was visualizing it on the big screen.

And you like movies a lot.

I -- oh, man. I don't get to go enough, because of Echo and these equipment problems. I have to be here so much... But I would see everything, good or bad, no matter what. I just love to go to the movies. And whenever I want to treat myself, that's what I do, I go to the movies, and I'll go to two or three in a row.

You even like movies like Godzilla and Mothra...

Yeah. That's why I like that show Mystery Science Theater.