Visionaries and Convergences A BIT of The Virtual Community

The "virtual community" of online networking is as real as any physical community. In this BIT, "First Citizen of the Internet" Howard Rheingold offers an account of the people who made this networked world possible -- "stubborn visionaries who insisted that computers could be used by people other than specialists" -- describing pioneers of citizen tool-making that range from a former radar operator who had an epiphany on the way to work in 1950 to crusading programmers, clever MIT hackers, and the creators of Usenet, MUD, and the WELL.