s. And yet--it never
seemed to shrink much, either. Year in, year out, decade in, decade
out, some strange demographic minority accreted to support the
magazine. The enthusiastic readership did not seem to have much in the
way of coherent politics or ideals. It was sometimes hard to
understand what held them together (if the often bitter debate in the
letter-columns could be described as "togetherness").

But if the magazine did not flourish, it was resilient; it got by.
Then, in 1984, the birth-year of the Macintosh computer, CoEvolution
Quarterly suddenly hit the rapids. Point Foundation had discovered the
computer revolution. Out came the Whole Earth Software Catalog of
1984, arousing headscratching doubts among the tie-dyed faithful, and
rabid enthusiasm among the nascent "cyberpunk" milieu, present company
included. Point Foundation started its yearly Hackers Conference, and
began to take an extensive interest in the strange new possibilities of
digital counterculture. CoEvolution Quarterlyfolded its teepee,
replaced by Whole Earth Software Review and eventually by Whole Earth
Review (the magazine's present incarnation, currently under the
editorship of virtual-reality maven Howard Rheingold).

1985 saw the birth of the "WELL"--the "Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link."
The Well was Point Foundation's bulletin board system.

As boards went, the Well was an anomaly from the beginning, and
remained one. It was local to San Francisco. It was huge, with
multiple phonelines and enormous files of commentary. Its complex
UNIX-based software might be most charitably described as
"user-opaque." It was run on a mainframe out of the rambling offices
of a non-profit cultural foundation in Sausalito. And it was crammed
with fans of the Grateful Dead.

Though the Well was peopled by chattering hipsters of the Bay Area
counterculture, it was by no means a "digital underground" board.
Teenagers were fairly scarce; most Well users (known as "Wellbeings")
were thirty- and forty-something Baby Boomers. They tended to work in
the information industry: hardware, software, telecommunications,
media, entertainment. Librarians, academics, and journalists were
especially common on the Well, attracted by Point Foundation's
open-handed distribution of "tools and ideas."

There were no anarchy files on the Well, scarcely a dropped hint about
access codes or credit-card theft. No one used handles. Vicious
"flame-wars" were held