I've an ongoing interest in computer-mediated communications, having given local BBS's (in Rochester, NY), GEnie, Compuserve, and The WELL (as justjoe) a try in the past. Once upon a time, I followed the conversation at HotWired, and most recently at The FreshPress, The Gate Conferences and The Utne Cafe, all three of which use Motet conferencing software (which was excellent in version 1, but which, with version 2, seems to be suffering from feature creep and to be moving away from the basics of text-oriented conferencing).

From late summer 1998 to late summer 1999, I served as host for the Science conference at Cafe Utne. In that role, I had an opportunity to acquaint myself with the current incarnation of the print publication, Utne Reader, after not having been a very regular reader since the early 90s.

With that experience, and including other considerations, I decided that science (as I understand it), and the open inquiry associated with it, is too peripheral a concern overall with the staff, advertisers, and patrons of the Utne organization to make it personally worthwhile to continue my efforts in that role.

This page was last modified 20040108