My name is wjm@mit.edu (though I have many aliases), and I am an electronic flâneur. I hang out on the network.       The keyboard is my café. Each morning I turn to some nearby machine -my modest personal computer at home, a more powerful workstation in one of the offices or laboratories that I frequent, or a laptop in a hotel room-to log into electronic mail. I click on an icon to open an "inbox" filled with messages from round the world-replies to technical questions, queries for me to answer, drafts of papers, submissions of student work, appointments, travel and meeting arrangements, bits of business, greetings, reminders, chitchat, gossip, complaints, tips, jokes, flirtation. I type replies immediately, then drop them into an "outbox," from which they are forwarded automatically to the appropriate destinations. If I have time before I finish gulping my coffee, I also check the wire services and a couple of specialized news services to which I subscribe, then glance at the latest weather report. This ritual is repeated whenever I have a spare moment during the day.   William J. Mitchell, City of Bits, 1998

 

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