A List of Environmental and Telecommunications Events and Issues

June 6 to June 13, 1997







Published, Edited and Written by George Mokray for
Information Ecologies
218 Franklin St #3
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617)661-2676
gmoke@world.std.com

"A List..." is also a listserv. You can subscribe or unsubscribe by emailing a-list-request@world.std.com, leaving the Subject line blank, and typing "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" as the message.

Previous issues of "A List.." are available for your perusal at
http://world.std.com/~gmoke/AList.index.html

If you are interested in keeping Internet an open and free forum, you might want to take a look at the Blue Ribbon Campaign
http://www.eff.org/blueribbon.html



Listings

Sunday, June 8

12 pm - 5 pm
Boston Trailsfest - ethnic and natural foods, climbing treadwall, music, exhibits and workshops
contact AMC
Boston Common

7:30 pm
Boston Media Collective - initial meeting
contact 783-4328 or jay@user1.channel1.com
Community Church, 565 Boylston St, Copley Sq, Boston
$25 to $50 donation for use of the space, so the hat will be passed

Monday, June 9

University Presidents for a Sustainable Future Eighth Annual Institute
contact 627-3464
Tufts University, Medford
through June 20

Tuesday, June 10

Environmental Literacy Institute - case studies on "Science and Sustainable Communities" and Industrial Ecology" continuing education and graduate credit available
contact Julie Newman 627-3464, ulsf@infonet.tufts.edu, or http://www.ulsf.org
Medford, MA
through June 21

7:30 pm
Protecting Our Local Environment - discussion of Sierra Club initiatives in western suburbs to address problems of sprawl and Hanscom Field expansion
contact John Andrews 981-7413
Hancock Church, 1912 Massachusetts Ave, Lexington

Wednesday, June 11

5:30-7:00 pm
Women as Transformational Leaders Support Group
facilitated by Virginia Mary Swain
contact 225-0403 or imagine@world.std.com
The Center for Strategic Change, 49 Hancock St
$75/$25 materials, participation must be confirmed in advance

Thursday, June 12

8 am - 12 pm
Workshop on Combining Emergency Response Plans for EPA, OSHA, US Coast Guard, and DOT
Len Wallace, EPA; Roger Hatfield, Nashua, NH Fire Dept; Gail Twining, Lucent Technologies; Ray Lizot, Texas Instruments; Michele Barg & Ed Zimmerman, QST Environmental; Michael Baram, moderator
contact NBEN at (508) 557-5475, execdirector@nben.org or http://www.nben.org
Raytheon - Electronic Systems Division, 180 Hartwell Rd, Bedford
NBEN Members $20; Non-members $50

8:30 am -1:30 pm
Toward Sustainability: A Conference on Sustainable Development Initiatives in New England with workshops on sustainable housing, community planning, business development, sustainable sewage treatment, urban sustainability, and industrial development
contact Sustainable Development Conference c/o Dale Morrow, UMass Dept of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning,109 Hills North, Amherst, MA 01003 (413)545-4259 or (617)742-0820
Registration deadline by June 5 cost for American Planning Association members is $45, students $35 and others $55

12 pm - 1:30 pm
Women as Transformational Leaders Support Group
facilitated by Virginia Mary Swain
contact 225-0403 or imagine@world.std.com
The Center for Strategic Change, 10 Milk Street, Boston, Third Floor (at corner of Milk and State Streets)
$100/$25 materials, participation must be confirmed in advance

2 pm
Assisted Hydrothermal Oxidation - A Proposed On-Site Disposal Technology for Halogenated Waste
David Ross, Stanford Research Institute
MIT Building E40, Room 496

6 pm
Environmental Roundtable
contact George Skillman at 731-0483
Wilderness Society, 45 Bromfield St, 11th floor, Boston
$5 for pizza, drinks, and salad

Friday, June 13

Homestead '97 - A conference for grassroots and direct action activists interested in radical solutions to poverty and homelessness, and the continued criminalization of the poor
contact 287-9494 or http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7996/jun97.html
Throughout the Boston area

6 pm - 7 pm
Women as Transformational Leaders Support Group
facilitated by Virginia Mary Swain
contact 225-0403 or imagine@world.std.com
The Center for Strategic Change, 49 Hancock St
$90/$25 materials, participation must be confirmed in advance
Saturday, June 14

Homestead '97 - A conference for grassroots and direct action activists interested in radical solutions to poverty and homelessness, and the continued criminalization of the poor
contact 287-9494 or
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7996/jun97.html
Throughout the Boston area

Sunday, June 15

Homestead '97 - A conference for grassroots and direct action activists interested in radical solutions to poverty and homelessness, and the continued criminalization of the poor
contact 287-9494 or
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7996/jun97.html
Throughout the Boston area

Sources for Listings:
MIT _Tech Talk_ :
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www
Harvard _Gazette_ :
http://www.news.harvard.edu/hno.subpages/hno.calendar.full.html
Harvard Environmental Resources On-Line:
http://environment.harvard.edu
MA Executive Office of Environmental Affairs calendar:
http://www.magnet.state.ma.us/envir/earth.htm
Earth Day Network international/national listings:
http://www.cfe.cornell.edu/EarthDay/ednethome.html
Earth Day Greater Boston calendar:
http://www.earthdaygb.org

act-ma the Massachusetts activists mailing list:
subscribe by emailing majordomo@igc.apc.org, leaving the subject line blank and typing "subscribe act-ma" as the message

Peace and Justice Events Hotline at (617)787-6809

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Practice Wild Gift Economy

Editorial Comment: Here are the quotes from Gary Snyder's _The Practice of the Wild_ ( North Point Press, 1990 ISBN 0-86547-454-0 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0865474540/alistA/) that I relate to the practice of a wild gift economy. This is only one stream of the wisdom that runs through this book.


(19) "Instead of making the world safer for humankind, the foolish tinkering with the powers of life and death by the occidental scientist-engineer-ruler puts the whole planet on the brink of degradation. Most of humanity - foragers, peasants, or artisans - has always taken the other fork. That is to say, they have understood the play of the real world, with all its suffering, not in simple terms of 'nature red in tooth and claw' but through the celebration of the gift-exchange quality of our give-and-take. 'What a big potlatch we are all members of!' To acknowledge that each of us at the table will eventually be part of the meal is not just being 'realistic.' It is allowing the sacred to enter and accepting the sacramental aspect of our shaky temporary personal being."

(21) "One must not waste, or be careless, with the bodies or the parts of any creature one has hunted or gathered. One must not boast, or show much pride in accomplishment, and one must not take one's skill for granted. Wastefulness and carelessness are caused by stinginess of spirit, an ungracious unwillingness to complete the gift-exchange transaction. (These rules are also particularly true for healers, artists, and gamblers.)"

(31) "The commons is the contract a people make with their local natural system. The word has an instructive history: it is formed of ko, 'together,' with (Greek) moin, 'held in common.' But the Indo-European root mei means basically to 'move, to go , to change.' This had an archaic special meaning of 'exchange of goods and services within a society as regulated by custom or law.' I think it might well refer back to the principle of gift economies: 'the gift must always move.' The root comes into Latin as munus, 'service performed for the community' and hence 'municipality.'"

(74-75) "A young white woman asked me (this was another time): 'If we have made such good use of animals, eating them, singing about them, drawing them, riding them, and dreaming about them, what do they get back from us?' An excellent question, directly on the point of etiquette and propriety, and putting it from the animals' side. The Ainu say that the deer, salmon, and bear like our music and are fascinated by our languages. So we sing to the fish or the game, speak words to them, say grace. Periodically we dance for them. A song for your supper: performance is currency in the deep world's gift economy. The other creatures probably do find us a bit frivolous: we keep changing our outfits, and we eat too many different things. Nonhuman nature, I cannot help feeling, is well inclined toward humanity and only wishes modern people were more reciprocal, not so bloody."

(103) "For those who would see directly into essential nature, the idea of the sacred is a delusion and an obstruction: it diverts us from seeing what is before our eyes: plain thusness. Roots, stems, and branches are all equally scratchy. No hierarchy, no equality. No occult and exoteric, no gifted kids and slow achievers. No wild and tame, no bound or free, no natural and artificial. Each totally its own frail self. Even though connected all which ways; even _because_ connected all which ways.

"This, _thusness_, is the nature of the nature of nature. The wild in wild."

(147) "The occidental approach to the arts - since the rise of the bourgeoisie, if we like - is to downplay the aspect of accomplishment and push everyone to be continually doing something new. This puts a considerable burden on the workers of every generation, a double burden since they think they must dismiss the work of the generation before and then do something supposedly better and different. The emphasis on mastering the tools, on repetitive practice and training, has become very slight. In a society that follows tradition, creativity is understood as something that comes almost by accident, is unpredictable, and is a gift to certain individuals only. It cannot be programmed into the curriculum. It is better in small quantities. We should be grateful when it comes along, but don't count on it. Then when it _does_ appear it's the real thing. It takes a powerful impulse for a student-apprentice who has been told for eight or ten years to 'always do what was done before,' as in the production tradition of folk pottery, to turn it a new way. What happens then? The old guys in this tradition look and say, 'Ha! You did something new! Good for you!'"

(173) "One time when the Master was washing his bowls, he saw two birds contending over a frog. A monk who also saw this asked, 'Why does it come to that?'

"The Master replied, 'It's only for your benefit.'"
Dong-Shan

(180) "Deep Ecology thinkers insist that the natural world has value in its own right, that the health of natural systems should be our first concern, and that this best serves the interests of humans as well. They are well aware that primary people everywhere are our teachers in these values (Sessions and Devall, 1985)."

(183) On the mealtime chant for Zen monks: "They are part of the first and last practice of the wild: _Grace_."

(184) "A subsistence economy is a sacramental economy because it has faced up to one of the critical problems of life and death: the taking of life for food. Contemporary people do not need to hunt, many cannot even afford meat, and in the developed world the variety of foods available to us makes the avoidance of meat an easy choice. Forests in the tropics are cut to make pasture to raise beef for the American market. Our distance from the source of our food enables us to be superficially more comfortable, and distinctly more ignorant."

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Inupiaq Values

Editorial Comment: Once more, an idea from Gary Snyder's _Practice of the Wild_ (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0865474540/alistA/). Share it with your favorite advocate of "family values."


"The native people of northwest Alaska have been intent on clarifying their own value system in recent years. This effort is called the 'Inupiaq spirit movement' - the revival of Inupiaq spirit. On the wall of the classroom of the Kobuk school was a poster-sized list of 'Inupiaq values': 

 
						HUMOR
					       SHARING
					       HUMILITY
					     HARD WORK
					   SPIRITUALITY
					   COOPERATION
					   FAMILY ROLES
					 AVOID CONFLICT
					 HUNTER SUCCESS
					 DOMESTIC SKILLS
					LOVE FOR CHILDREN
				        RESPECT FOR NATURE
				        RESPECT FOR OTHERS
				        RESPECT FOR ELDERS
				    RESPONSIBILITY FOR TRIBE
				     KNOWLEDGE OF LANGUAGE
				   KNOWLEDGE OF FAMILY TREE


"These warm and workable values are full of 'grandmother wisdom,' the fundamental all-time values of our species. Given a little stretching here and there, they'd work anywhere. What's lacking maybe is a clear articulation of what values apply to difficult or different neighbors - the concern is for conditions within the Inupiaq family, not for how to get along with outsiders."

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MAI - Who's MIA?

MAI is the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, a project of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to "facilitate and secure the benefits of foreign direct investment by providing investors with a set of internationally agreed rules." This is the next step towards the globalization of business after the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Treaties (GATT), North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA), and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The question is whether the MAI will provide the benefits of a global marketplace primarily and predominantly for corporations over the interests of local and national sovereignty and the rights of individuals. As the negotiations have been proceeding out of the line of sight of the public eye, this is not an unfair question to ask.

The first US public discussion of the MAI occurred on May 31 at Boston College. I attended the afternoon session and listened to Rep John Tierney moderate a "debate" between proponents Meg Lundsager of the US Treasury and Cynthia Beltz from the American Enterprise Institute and Ronnie Dugger of the Alliance for Democracy and Lori Wallach of Public Citizen. The proponents argued international trade versus no international trade rather than international trade versus Multilateral Agreement on Investment trade. An inherently dishonest and trivializing approach if you ask me. What was especially telling was that only the opponents quoted from the document under discussion.

Paul Johnson videotaped the whole conference and has videotapes available for sale. Contact him at (508)281-2699 for price. He is particularly interested in providing tapes for public access TV cablecasts.

David Adams of the Alliance for Democracy has background information about the MAI on the conference's Webpage at
http://world.std.com/~dadams/MAI

You might want to take a look at this issue before the agreement is ratified and your economic life changes out from under you.

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NYC Natural Step Community Seminar

Editorial Comment: Wendy Brawer (WEBrawer@greenmap.com) of the Green Map Project (http://ww.greenmap.com) sent this in at the last minute.


Can we have a win-win-win for business, our community & the Earth?
Monday, June 16, 1997
8:30 am Registration
9 am - 5:00 pm
Learning Alliance
324 Lafayette St. 7th Floor, New York City, NY, (Greenwich Village at Bleecker & Houston), Tel: 212-226-7171

THE NATURAL STEP COMMUNITY SEMINAR with two of Sweden's foremost leaders of the ecomunicipality movement, combining ecological and economic development. This event is held in celebration of U.N. World Environment Day, the 25th anniversary of the world's first environmental conference, held in Stockholm.

Presenters
Torbjorn Lahti is an economist, community planner, and adjunct researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. He returned to his native Overtornea to combat unemployment and environmental deterioration by leading its successful effort to become Sweden's first ecomunicipality.
Gunnar Brundin is an environmental health officer, economist and teacher who founded Sweden's second ecomunicipality, Sorsele. He and Lahti are adjunct faculty at Umea University, Sweden's leading environmental school, where they teach ecological planning and building. Together they own the environmental consulting firm Esam Utbildning AB in Umea, Sweden, which has assisted in developing more than 60 ecomunicipalities with TNS.

Terry Gips is an economist, ecologist, author, TNS Instructor and President of Sustainability Associates, an environmental consulting firm in Minneapolis. He has served as a White House and Congressional aide, Cargill economist, President of the Intl. Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture and Aveda Corp. Director of Ecological Affairs.

Early $95; After 6/11 $125. Corporate: Early $145; After 6/11 $175. Fee includes materials. A delicious organic vegetarian lunch from Herban Kitchen can be ordered for $15.

Register by phone (212-226-7171), email (lalliance@igc.apc.org), fax (212-274-8712) or mail. Pay with check or any major credit card.

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Eco-Dorms

Editorial Comment: Amy S Mondloch (amond932@uwsp.edu) posted this request for information to the corporations list (corporations@envirolink.org, to subscribe email majordomo@envirolink.org and type "subscribe corporations" as your message). Isn't there something like an eco-dorm at Brown University?


Greetings all--

a group of students and faculty at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point are working to make one of our residence halls an eco-hall. Housing and the Residence Hall Association (student governance of the halls) are somewhat interested, but not sold on the idea.

Is there anyone out there who knows of good programs already set up? or whose been successful in bringing environmentally friendly housing to their campus?

We plan on checking out the eco-hall at Northland College in Ashland, WI, but beyond that everything seems a bit hazy

Ann Finan is heading up this project-- and she can be reached at afina592@uwsp.edu

Thanks

PEACE,
amy

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Network for New Ideas Summer Internship

Editorial Comment: Jim Davis (webmaster@vboston.com) publishes Virtually Boston (http://www.vboston.com), a Website that is a resource to what's happening in Boston. He must do a good job because he links to "A List..." He sent me this internship announcement but I wonder why Shaun Paul (spaul@igc.org) of EcoLogic and an "A List..." reader didn't do it first. Since the project sounds interesting, I hope that EcoLogic will let us know how it works out.


ECOLOGIC DEVELOPMENT FUND
announces its
NETWORK FOR NEW IDEAS SUMMER INTERNSHIP
Push Technology - Biodiversity Conservation - Smart Agents
Indigenous Land Rights - Sustainable Agriculture
Agents Inc. - Tropical Rainforests - Cisco Systems
Biotechnology - Latin America - Globalization
WHAT DO ALL OF THESE HAVE IN COMMON? THE NETWORK FOR NEW IDEAS

Are you familiar with all these terms? If so, you could be the person to join us in lauching a cutting edge initiative.

Today's easy and rapid access to information is revolutionizing every aspect of our global society. With this information, even isolated countries and resource-poor community groups could begin to address the vexing problems of poverty and environmental degradation.

Yet there is a growing divide between information haves and have nots. The expanding modern information infrastructure has the potential to lower the physical and economic boundaries that have contributed to this divide.

The EcoLogic Development Fund, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering self-determination among and environmental protection for local communities in Latin America and the Caribbean, is responding to the information needs of developing countries by establishing the Network for New Ideas (NNI). NNI will empower local community groups to confront and overcome constraints to sustainable development by providing vital access to computer-mediated communications.

ECOLOGIC IS LOOKING FOR A SUMMER INTERN TO HELP US:
-- Identify industry partners to work with us in launching NNI
-- Develop relationships with key technology companies
-- Find content providers who are producing information on international environmental issues
-- Create a beta version of a new online service that brings together smart agent and push technology
REQUIREMENTS:
-- Experience with online research
-- Familiarity with high technology companies
-- Strong business writing and verbal communication skills
-- Knowledge of HTML a plus
-- Fluency in Spanish highly desirable
-- Available 8-15 hours a week for a minimum of three months over the summer with the prospect of extending the internship into the fall

For more information or to inquire about applying for the position, please contact: EcoLogic Development Fund, Box 3405, Cambridge, MA, 02238-3405; Phone: (617) 441-6300; e-mail: lwills@ecologic.org

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Ground Level Ozone Network

Editorial Comment: Marshall T. Spriggs (mtspriggs@igc.apc.org) sent this in.


Environmental scientists at Washington University in St. Louis are using an Internet air pollution "chat room" to help shape policy and provide a better understanding of how ground level ozone, an unhealthy air pollutant, moves across the country.

Washington University's Center for Air Pollution Impact, Trends and Analysis (CAPITA) has a perpetual "virtual gathering" for the air quality workgroup of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Ozone Transport Assessment Group (OTAG). "Through this real-time, interactive site, air-quality colleagues, comprising national air pollution experts, state air quality directors, industry representatives, environmental groups and EPA personnel, among others, have been able to make inferences about the regional nature of ozone and its long-range transport."

Reportedly, this experiment has changed EPA's emphasis from command-control to consensus-building by building consensus beforehand, through stakeholder conversations that reach agreement on the basic principles of management decisions before they are implemented and by providing a medium where fresh research is posted frequently, allowing people to observe and comment on work as it is being presented.

CAPITA is the world's largest private library of air pollution literature and computerized data, spanning more than 100 years of American pollution and energy consumption. In addition to technical reports, color animations developed at CAPITA showing ozone movement across a map of the United States also can be accessed at this website. Scores of people visit the website daily, and there is nearly daily discussion on the information and ideas presented. Moreover, the data can be downloaded from CAPITA and used for other research, and specialized databases can be generated.

The website address is: http://capita.wustl.edu/otag/

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Anti-Spam Legislation

The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (CAUCE) (http://www.cauce.org) published an alert on upcoming legislation on Internet spamming to the Computer Organizations of NE (CONE) List (cone@bcs1.ziplink.net, subscribe by emailing majordomo@bcs1.ziplink.net and typing "subscribe cone" as the message). CAUCE (http://www.cauce.org) believes these are important lobbying points in the present debate:

* "Junk" email lets advertisers make a profit while recipients pay the bill, just like junk faxes did. This "Cost Shifting" was the problem with junk faxes, and is just as bad with junk email. If businesses are going to make profits, they should be required to pay the costs of doing business.

* This is *not* an issue of censorship but of protection from deceptive and damaging business practice.

* CAUCE supports a system that requires an "opt-in," where individuals don't receive advertising they don't want, and don't have to fight to get themselves dislodged from mailing lists.

* CAUCE opposes "filtering" or "opt-out" approaches because they do not require advertisers bear their own costs. Filtering requirements cost ISPs and consumers more money, not less!

CAUCE supports H.R. 1748, the bill from Rep. Christopher Smith, R-NJ, over S. 771, the competing bill from Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-AK. They expect another anti-spamming bill to be filed as well. (Sen Murkowski is key in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge debate as well. Contact the Wilderness Society (45 Bromfield St, Suite 1101, Boston MA 021108 (617)350-8866, ne@tws.org) for information in support of HR 900 and S 531, the Arctic Refuge Wilderness Bill and against Sen Murkowski.)

Contact your legislators through
The Honorable
Washington, DC 20510
The Honorable
Washington, DC 20515
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
http://www.senate.gov/senator/index.html

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CONE, Signet, and Community Technology Centers

Computer Organizations of New England, Inc. (CONE) is a new organization to help share computer support and information among individuals, companies, and groups. CONE maintains a list of special interest groups that have continued their activities since the break-up of the Boston Computer Society ("A List..." serves as the listed continuation of the old BCS Environmental SIG) at
http://bcs1.ziplink.net/Groups/cone/sig/index.html

CONE will hold a membership meeting at the Arlington Public Library on Thursday June 19 1997 at 6:30 for the purpose of voting on membership dues.

SigNet.org (http://www.SigNet.org/) is another group that arose in the wake of BCS. SigNet is run by computer interest groups for computer interest groups. They mainatain a calendar at
http://www.SigNet.org/cgi-bin/Calendar/calendar.cgi

The Community Technology Center Network (CTCNet, EDC, 55 Chapel St., Newton, MA 02158, 617-969-7100 x2727 at ctcnet@edc.org, http://www.ctcnet.org) has a state by state listing of the existing community technology centers (http://www.ctcnet.org/frames.html). There are 200 CTCs affiliated and 44 in Massachusetts, more than any other state.

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How Many Computer Recycling Groups Are There?

Resources for Parents, Educators and Publishers (http://www.microweb.com/pepsite/) maintains a listing of computer recycling sites at
http://www.microweb.com/pepsite/Recycle/recycle_index.html

Here are the local ones, each of them serves different communities and is asking for different equipment:

Boston Computer Foundation
Gretchen Hardey, Executive Director
(617) 290-5700 Fax:(617) 290-5744, bcf@ziplink.net

East-West Education Development Foundation
Wayne D. King / Stephen Farrell
23 Dry Dock Avenue, Boston, MA 02110 (617) 261-6699 (617) 261-6644, ewedf@ix.netcom.com

Mindshare Collaborative
Charles Thompson
P.O. BOX 35389, Brighton, MA 02135 (617) 787-7870 Fax (617) 787-1636, cmt@world.std.com

NCC Computer Donations
Deborah Hier
30 Federal Street 5th Floor, Boston, MA 02110 (617)728-9151, tdc@igc.apc.org

New Visions - SMOC (South Middlesex Opportunity Council)
Marlene Archer
300 Howard St, Framingham, MA 01702 (508)620-2677 , msa@meol.mass.edu

ReTech America
Carl Lizzio
(617)482-0999, dmerc@tiac.net, http://dmerc.tiac.net

TecsChange - Technology For Social Change
Aram Falsafi
1151 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138 (617)666-8866, (617)783-1668, tecschange@tecschange.org

Virtually Wired Educational Foundation
Coralee Whitcomb
55 Temple Place, Boston, MA 02111 (617)542-5555, info@vw.org

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The Begging Bowl

I've been participating in Howard Rheingold's Electric Minds (http://www.minds.com), a virtual community webconferencing system, since it began around the beginning of the year. One of the conversations I've enjoyed the most is the one in the Wealth of Networks conference on the topic of gift economies. Anna Percy from Waitakere NZ, who I know from the Ecocity Listserv (ECOCITY@SEGATE.SUNET.SE) that UN University in Tokyo publishes, also takes part in the Electric Minds discussion. It is exciting to be working on the same problems - systemic ecological/economic/sociopolitical/personal delusions of restorative possibility - internationally networked, city by city, neighborhood by neighborhood, together. How strange to recognize someone from the other side of the world this way and trade words and ideas so easily.

Within the last few weeks, Electric Minds has lost most of its initial investors and stopped paying hosts and for new articles. EMinds is still keeping its conferencing system going. Is half a year a long enough time to build an international Web community? Is it an example of a gift economy since it doesn't charge a fee to join? Will it survive?

Here in Boston, Virtually Wired (http://www.vw.org) faces a cash-flow crisis and necessary restructuring after two years of affordable public Internet access and training. We take in about $2000 per month from that and on average over $600 per month from contract job-training projects. However, it takes 30-90 days to receive payment some of these contracts and we have don't have enough operating capital to make up the balance in the interim. VW also faces the uncertainties of a new landlord. In response to these difficulties, the volunteers are refocusing our services and systems. VW, like EMinds, can use all the help it can get. Will Virtually Wired survive?

I've been doing "A List..." since November 1994. There are about 250 subscribers to the listserv, grown from the original 150 or so. I have never bothered to find out exactly how many hits my page is getting. I ask this world-wide self-selected interest group for contributions in the Begging Bowl section each week:

"A List..." is a freeware/shareware publication. If the information is of any value to you, please contribute - money, information, encouragement, prayers and good wishes are all valid currencies for feedback and will be gratefully appreciated..."

First year I received $448 from 12 people. Just paid for my Net service ($440 annually). Second year the budget was $630 from 15 people. This year so far I've received $407 from 13 people. Circulation has grown from 150 to 250. About 5% of the people who receive "A List..." are contributing monetarily. Maybe another 5% send me information and acknowledged support. Thank you all for reading. Will "A List..." survive?

Will these ventures ever become "profitable?" Or have they been profitable from their first moments as thought experiments?

How "A List..." works:
If you want to have a listing included in "A List..." please send it to me before noon on the Friday before the event and if said even is deemed suitable for coverage, it will be included in the appropriate edition of "A List..." Articles and reviews, ideas, rants and opinions are also solicited. Publication is up to the erratic discretion of the editor.

"A List..." is also a listserv. You can subscribe or unsubscribe to the listserv by emailing a-list-request@world.std.com, leaving the Subject line blank, and typing "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" as the message.

"A List..." is a freeware/shareware publication. If the information is of any value to you, please contribute - money, information, encouragement, prayers and good wishes are all valid currencies for feedback and will be gratefully appreciated by
George Mokray
Information Ecologies
218 Franklin St #3
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617)661-2676
gmoke@world.std.com

This publication is copyrighted to George Mokray and the individual writers of the articles. Permission to reproduce is granted for non-profit purposes as long as the source is cited.

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