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Subject: <nettime> <mandel>
From: Gerard Van der Leun <gerard.vanderleun@generalmedia.com>
Date: 30 Apr 1998 21:47:48 +0200

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[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.
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