NET DENIZENS: JOY JONES ON THE INTERNET

By Mark Shainblum

Originally published in Enrage magazine, 1994

A power-talking twentysomething topic-jumping dynamo, Joy Jones in many ways empitomizes the culture that has sprung up around the Internet, the global network of computer networks.

A Unix programmer working for a major Montreal software firm, and a technology panelist for CBC Radio's Home Run, Joy has been on the ground floor of the rise of netculture.

We conducted this interview at her office, in front of her fire-breathing Sun workstation --which probably cost more, individually than every car I've owned, collectively-- as she participated in a real-time discussion group on a haven. A haven, she explained to me, is a MUD without the "D."

Confused? So was I.

A MUD, for the net-illiterate, is a "Multi-User Dungeon," a kind of never-ending, electronic Dungeons & Dragons game. A haven is a MUD without the role-playing; a discussion forum using the same technology, but designed to encourage conversation rather than evisceration.

Joy sat me down in front of another workstation and I tried to communicate with some of the denizens of the haven, really I did. But all I could really see was a mad jumble of words falling all over themselves. E-mail on speed. 33-1/3 LP's (remember them?) played at 78. It was too much for my sluggish neurons. But not for Joy. Her fingers just danced across the keyboard, lightning fast.

She was in her element.

Enrage: Would you describe yourself as a net denizen?

Joy: An addict?

Enrage: What addicts you?

Joy: You can have contact with a lot of people that you wouldn't normally meet in real life, and you can access information really easily. You can hop from place to place and get information that's in text, visuals, animations and audio.

Enrage: How did you first start doing it?

Joy: I had a school account and I discovered newsgroups. You can find out anything from newsgroups, you can everything you need to use the rest of the net from there.

Enrage: Psychologically different space from talking...?

Joy: The interaction is psychologically different, definitely. The information access is a lot nicer. I can't see animations or hear sounds from a book, so there's a much wider range of information available to me.

Enrage: Interaction. In what sense?

Joy: You can meet people you would not meet in normal life. How you look, what gender you are, how old you are... none of it matters. It's totally moot.

I have a lot of good friends on the net, in fact people who are going to visit me in the summer. You meet people from all around the world, from different walks of life and wildly different ages.

Enrage: Is cyberculture real, is it just the media?

Joy: It's definitely a real social phenomenon. It's a culture just like any other. Culture is by definition a construction. We've got one.

Enrage: Parallel between cyberculture and SF or rock fandom?

Joy: I see a parallel between it and any small group. There are parallels between netculture and all small alternative cultures just because it's a small inbred group.

Enrage: It could be alternative rock just as easily.

Joy: Just as easily. It's a small inbred group who has their own terms of reference, they really do see themselves as being marvelous because they know how to do all these silly things, and they have their own word and their own way of doing things.

Enrage: The internet is another planet.

Joy: It is a planet, and it's also defining its own terms.

Enrage: Is this the 21st cent., or is this just a tiny slice of what we're going to get.

Joy: It'll get a lot more interesting, but I think exclusion is a big worry. Not enough people will have the technology or the skills or the knowledge or be ready to deal with it. My mother just got email, and she's sort of floundering a bit. She's doing well, given everything.

Enrage: It's the "ask a ten year old to help you" phenomenon.

Joy: Definitely. I've met people on the net claiming to be eleven.

Enrage: Are we leaving the generation older than us behind?

Joy: Same as last time. They're lost with computers a little bit, too, aren't they? Any tech advance, you'd better be in on it when you're young, and the younger you learn it, the better off you are. I'll be eternally grateful that my parents put me in computer lessons. Computers are one of those areas in which nobody is truly, absolutely an expert, which makes everybody very tense and protective of their domains, because they're worried that the other person will ask them a question that they can't answer. Nobody knows the net that fully. I know little bits of it, somebody else knows little bits of it, and everybody makes choices based on the little bit they know.

Enrage: Isn't that the definition of the net? This big sprawling anarchy?

Joy: Right. That's part of its charm. But pits of it are organized. World Wide Web is fairly organized and quite accessible. One place I hang out at is well organized and structured. You can't say nasty words and you can't go around killing people. There are structures and systems.

Enrage: But if you don't want to participate in them, you don't have to.

Joy: Right.

Enrage: Is there a danger than creeping commercialism is going to invade the net?

Joy: Commercialism is already creeping on. World Wide Web is already quite commercial. The thing I'm worried about is that MCI in the States owns a lot of the lines, now, and we're going to see Internet change to pay-as-you-go. I think the days of "I have a school account and I can do whatever the hell I want" are going to change.

Enrage: How can MCI own the lines, I don't follow.

I'm not a big expert on this, but the American Federal government used to own the lines. They were basically subsidizing the net through the military. It started out as a Department of Defense thing, which is pretty funny since it's not a very secure system.

Enrage: Hasn't that been the myth for the past ten years, though?

Joy: Right. People keep saying it's going to stop. The collapse of the Internet. Film at eleven. It's an on-going joke, but nonetheless with MCI owning the lines, it's a real concern.

Enrage: But there are always alternative lines...

Joy: Somebody always has to be paying for it, and nobody really knows how much any of it is costing anybody.