Message-Id: <199701072158.PAA26347@medicine>
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Date: Tue, 07 Jan 1997 15:49:33 -0500
To: socgrad@csf.colorado.edu,
        Sociology Graduate Students -- International <socgrad@csf.colorado.edu>
From: ghougham@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu (Gavin Hougham)
Subject: Virtual communities
Have a question for all of you cyberphreaks and community soc types.  I am
trying to track down the details of a town-wide experiment conducted
sometime within the last 2 to 4 years, in which everyone in a small
community was given (?) a computer, modem and software to enable them to
contact each other easily, construct BB's, and otherwise communicate and
reconstruct the community "virtually."   Give everyone a box, connect
everyone to everyone and see what happens.  Maybe throw in some incentives
to use the "system" like being able to tap into city hall records or the
library catalogs from home...?  My vague recollection of the support and
aegis of the trial might have involved a big grant, or a corporate
sponsorship of some sort, but I'm grasping here...  Can anyone remember what
this was about?

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Gavin Hougham, Ph.D. (cand.)
The University of Chicago Medical Center
Section of General Internal Medicine and
Department of Sociology
5841 South Maryland Ave. (MC 6098)
Chicago, IL 60637

(312) 702-6735
ghougham@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu
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