This Gopherspace is an experiment in publishing in Cyberspace.  We
wanted to build something that would be something like a magazine --
with editors, editorial control and comments, and a clear "point of
view".  We also wanted to build off all the unique folks who come to
the WELL, which was a child of the Whole Earth Review (WER) and (way back)
the Whole Earth Catalog (WEC).  WER and WEC were always about "access
to tools and ideas", and that idea seemed to have a place in
Cyberspace.

But we also wanted to take advantage of the tools we now have here
WER and WEC typically included a short editorial comment, an excerpt,
picture, or something to  give you and idea of what it was, and a
pointer to where you could get it.  We want to use the same idea here,
but with tools like Gopher, we can make that pointer real.  Just
yank here ==> !  and we'll pull the things right through a hole in the
net back to your screen.  That's a powerful idea, and we'd be the
first to admit that this Gopherspace only gives a small glimpse into
what that's really like.

There is a group of editors who built this Gopherspace -- see the
'Editors' menu item for a list of them.  We don't have a single
central editor, and it shows.  You'll see a variety of points of view,
of "editorial style".  We're all doing it for free, we're working on
it.  But we want to make this a distinct place with a real feeling.
Not Just Another Gopherhole.

Some places in this Gopherspace you'll see either initials or the name
of the person who wrote some editorial command or who built some piece
of this Gopherspace.  That's deliberate.  One of the strengths of WER
and WEC was that all the pieces were signed by whoever wrote them.
After a while, you could get an idea of what people interests,
strengths, and weakness are.  We'll also use it to acknowledge folks
from out in the Net who contribute things. We don't intend to write
everything here ourselves.

Send us suggestions for how we can make it better.  Email
gopher@well.sf.ca.us. 

ph 8/26/93

.