Gerard Van der Leun on Thu, 30 Apr 1998 21:40:06 +0200 (MET DST) |
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<nettime> <mandel> |
[Gerard's flame was bounced by one moderator and approved by another-- still more evidence of the Nettime Cabal's *ruthless efficiency*.--T] A few days ago, Mark Stahlman posted a baseless and ignorant evaluation of both Tom Mandel and the book he co-authored with me, Rules of the Net. At the time, I replied with a post that was, perhaps, wisely bounced by the moderator of this list. It was, shall we say, written in the heat of contempt for Mr. Stahlman's uninformed views. But let that be. In answer to Mr. Stahlman and to, I hope, counter any impression of Tom Mandel left by him, I found an article I wrote about Mandel shortly after his death in 1995. I think it gives a fuller view of the man and his contribution to the Net than any flame I could light. I append it here to, in some small way, balance the thread. ===== A DEATH ON THE NET I knew <mandel> long before I met him. This is common enough in these days when more and more of us live second-hand and "virtually" in cybersomewhere. People bump into other people on America Online, or the Well, or some place else on the Net, and after a time arrange to meet. Meeting <mandel> though changed my life. This is uncommon on the Net where few personalities have the power, like the Velveteen Rabbit, to become real. <mandel> had the force, clarity and sheer staying power to become real. He also had the ability to make the on-line medium grow and mature. He taught me a lot about the power of the Net to make the things of the mind come alive. He taught me more still by his death. Tom Mandel (1946-1995) was one of the foremost early members of the Well, an on-line system best known for its new age feel and high level of discussion among its members. I first fell into the Well in 1986 and within a day ran into <mandel>. It was hard not to run into <mandel> in the Well in those days. He was everywhere -- in every conference and in almost every topic. He was ubiquitous. In a very real sense, he was one of the main ingredients of the Well. His role? To be a Pain-in-the-Ass. He was very good at this. He was a Great-Pain-in-the- Ass. I loved him for it. There was no blithe comment that disguised ignorance with style that failed to draw his fire. The was no grandiose but brain-dead theory that he could not smother with an inconvenient fact. Tom was the on-line blatherer's worst nightmare. His knowledge was wide-ranging, his opinions firmly held, his writing clear and he had facts at his fingertips to buttress his positions. He hated intellectual pretension and had no patience for fools or received wisdom. He could discuss the intricacies of the publishing business, the nature of Alzheimer's, the state of education, foreign policy, economics, the prospects of this year's baseball season, the books of Asimov or Aristotle, and the Military-Industrial complex with equal ease and assurance. If you were stupid or crossed him, he would flame you hairless -- sometimes for the sheer fun of it. He was a great and worthy opponent and a better friend. Mandel discovered on-line conferencing while recuperating from back surgery and became, in his own terms, addicted to it. I prefer to think that in this new medium gave him a chance to make a contribution that had more direct impact on the world than his work as a professional futurist at Stanford Research Institute, a west-coast think tank. And, in the end, he did. Besides giving the Well a wide range of innovations such as the True Confessions and Futures conferences, Tom went on to be the master builder of the Time/Warner on-line presence. But his most lasting contribution was the example of how he lived out his life and, in the end, his death openly and without apology on the Net. In what has to be "the year of the Internet", when stories about the Net and the Web and the On- line Services and the wonders of the Information Stuporhighway cannot be escaped in any medium, there are few examples given where people can see exactly what the new medium can be in its full potential. Most of the time, we are given bromides and platitudes about all the cool stuff, all the neat software, all the "information" that is just lying out there to be found. What the Net now has in spades is content. What it needs most is a clue about how to use it, about how to live and how to be. <mandel> knew about this. He'd used the medium to discuss his childhood, his thoughts, his work and his needs. When he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer six months ago, he used the medium to discuss the progress of his disease and, finally, as a means to say farewell to all those who knew him, not as a person, but only as <mandel>. In these final topics, continued over the months, a discerning person might finally see what this new medium could become is used openly and wisely. What Tom Mandel knew, and what many companies and individuals still refuse to learn, is that on- line is not about selling something to someone or bringing information to the starving masses. What it is about is people wanting to connect, in a real and genuine way, to other people free of the filters of older media; to establish, no matter how ephemerally, communities of like minded souls who are not separated by the facts of geography; to create a place where it really is the content of one's character that is the first and foremost thing people see. Through his work on the Well and Time Online, Tom Mandel gave the Net an example of how to transmit your soul through the medium of conferencing. <mandel> didn't supply software or hardware or a Net connection. <mandel> didn't make it easy to point and click your way mindlessly through mountains of data and hundreds of slow and mostly boring Web pages. What Tom gave to the Net was himself. And if you watched him long enough, you learned how to do that as well. Given to a tendency to monstrous procrastination in his work, he loved the warp and woof and immediacy of on-line discussion. He could, it is said, "Type a hundred words a minute and think faster." Because of this and his encyclopedic mind he could lead and indeed dominate dozens of topics simultaneously. If you wanted to argue with <mandel> you'd better have your ducks in a row, a lunch packed, and be wearing your surge protector because you were in for long, wild ride. There was nothing he would not discuss. All topics were grist to his mill, including the topic of his death. For many months on the Well and in Time Online, he had discussed with cool candor and no little emotion, the progress of his cancer as it relentlessly consumed him. The treatments and his reactions to them were set out for all to see and comment on. He kept almost nothing back. Finally, when it became clear that no medical procedure would save him and that his remaining time in life was shorter than he had hoped, he started a discussion on the Well that he titled "My Turn". In this topic, he announced that he was going to die and be unable to participate in the medium he loved much longer. The effect was electric and hundreds of responses flowed into the topic over the next few weeks, until, upon his death, it was closed. The discussion continued, without <mandel> in the Obituary topic. Tom Mandel died while being held by a woman that he loved and listening to Beethoven's Ode to Joy from the Ninth Symphony. At first I thought it was a beautiful way to die. Then I felt that it was, like the Net <mandel> loved and helped to grow, a thin thing, -- nice to contemplate but not really much good when you just sat still and looked at it. Poetic, but it didn't undo the sheer cold fact of his death. A fact which I do not approve of at all. Finally I decided it was as good a way to die as any and better than most. So it will have to do. But I don't really think about that time all that much now. Instead, I think about meeting him in the world for the first time. I remember how much smaller he seemed that I had imagined him from his presence on the Net; how he seemed both tough and frail at the same time. I remember knocking back serious shots of single-malt. I remember late night rambles through Manhattan and San Francisco. I remember his apartment piled high with drifts of books, papers, tapes and monographs -- crowded with the endless subject matter that made up his mind. And I think about the last time I spoke with him the week before he died. I apologized for now saying anything on-line in his "My Turn" topic; that I didn't have any words for that subject. He understood that, he said. I told him I'd see him somewhere a little further down the road. He understood that too. He said "I'm afraid to go there, but we all have to go. We have to be men." And that's how we left it, Tom and I. I suppose I could always go on-line and go to the Well and read any part of the hundreds of thousands of words <mandel> left there on any subject under the sun. I could go to Time Online and read the hundreds of testimonials to him in those conferences. But somehow I don't think I will. I no longer think of him as <mandel> -- like the Net he loved and helped build that's just too thin. I think of him now as Tom Mandel, the first friend I ever made before I met him. --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl