thought this might be of interest...
rma
>Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 14:09:04 -0500 (EST)
>From: ARTHUR KROKER <ctech@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>To: ctheory <ctheory@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Article 23-Digital City
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>Sender: owner-ctheory@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>Precedence: bulk
>Reply-To: ctheory@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
> CTHEORY
> THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE
>
> Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
> _____________________________________________________________________
>
> Digital City, Amsterdam
> =======================
>
> An Interview with Marleen Stikker
> ---------------------------------
>
> ~Shuschen Tan~
> ~Translated by Patrice Riemens~
>
> A digital city does not consist of bricks, concrete and
> cobblestones, but of telephone lines and electronic connections. Can
> such a city work? Last year, the ~Balie~ cultural centre started
> such an experiment, together with the 'xs4all' [ex-'hacktic'-transl]
> foundation. Anyone who's got a phone, a modem, and a computer can
> log into the digital city host computer and walk around town like a
> digital spirit: she can visit the central station, the digital cafe,
> and the electronic town hall. Marleen Stikker is the 'mayor' of
> Amsterdam Digital City (DDS), and she looks back at one year of
> promises fulfilled and unfulfilled.
>
> "Well, of course, sometimes the level of discussion in a particular
> newsgroup is no higher than on chatterboxes; and you do have the
> occasional rabid rightist spreading racist smut on the net. But
> generally speaking, life in the DDS is pretty much OK. It's just
> like an ordinary city" says Stikker, "everything you'd come across
> in ordinary life, we get here too."
>
> It was exactly one year ago this week that DDS opened her doors.
> Council elections were just coming up, and the new electronic medium
> looked just like the thing to bridge the gap between citizens and
> the authorities. The Amsterdam Municipality decided to subsidize the
> experiment, together with the (national) ministry of economic
> affairs and that of the interior. For the first time, DDS enabled
> Amsterdammers to look on-line into the council's minutes, to consult
> official policy papers and to request information from the digital
> town hall. But there were other activities, too. The 'Central
> Station' offered access to the entire Internet, one could patronize
> a digital cafe, browse through a digital kiosk, enter the digital
> house of culture and the arts, or pay a visit to a digital sex-shop,
> complete with a digital darkroom in the back. "All those ideas you
> had heard so often from the US about the new information society,
> tele-democracy, electronic citizenship, suddenly became a reality on
> DDS." Marleen Stikker is project manager at the ~Balie~ and
> initiator of DDS, and she envisaged the set-up known in the US as
> Freenet, a kind of virtual city where homeless people managed to
> demand via computer, and obtain in reality from the town's
> authorities, public showers and dressing-rooms so they could wash
> and dress appropriately when going to a job interview.
>
> Stikker, however, had never really envisaged that the interest for
> the Amsterdam experiment would take such a flight. Within a week of
> DDS's inauguration, no modem could be obtained in Amsterdam for love
> or money. The phone lines providing access to the DDS computer were
> overloaded at any hour of the day or night [they started with 20,
> -transl]. But the rush has somewhat stabilised now. The daily number
> of users now hover around 4000. One million 'pages' are being
> requested a month. A new configuration has been installed, the
> primitive menus of the beginning have now been replaced with a lot
> of graphics (photos, maps), and DDS looks poised to evolve into a
> truly virtual community.
>
> "In the beginning we were really afraid that the response would come
> only from that small band of 'computer-hackers' and BBS types you
> always encounter in this sort of project" says Stikker, who adds,
> "what you call the 'early adapters', very young kids mostly, who
> have grown up without a push button syndrome." Fortunately, it soon
> turned out that was not the case. 'Ordinary' people too, purchased a
> modem and went online. Yet Stikker is still far from satisfied about
> the rate of participation to DDS. "The digital population has a long
> way to go before being a true representation of the public at
> large." There are still far too few women, senior citizens and
> miority groups. A newsgroup that was set up especially for women was
> invaded in no time by men. Stikker: "You wouldn't believe it, all
> these guys were sitting there discussing women's issues. Till one of
> them said: look folks, if I was a woman, I wouldn't dig that!"
>
> Women are anyway something of a rarity in the virtual community.
> Stikker: "That's not surprising when you see how few women are
> sitting in front of a computer-screen. The rot is in the education
> system. You just go and have a look in the terminal rooms at
> Eindhoven technical university [Holland's largest -transl.]: out of
> 400 users, you'll see 2-3 females. It is only recently that news
> items about the Internet and the Digital Highway made inroads into
> the columns of magazines like ~Opzij~ [a large Dutch feminist
> monthly - transl.] and ELLE."
>
> We Are No Moralists
> -------------------
>
> Stikker did not feel like interfering when the women's newsgroup
> became a male territory. "That's not our job" she says, "We provide
> the platform and the tools. It's up to the people in the newsgroups
> to decide what they want, we do not interfere." Not even when things
> are uttered that in ordinary life would put you in court? "Well,
> sometimes you see things get out of hand, like with the rightist who
> went on for weeks ranting about foreigners. In real life, this would
> have resulted in fistfights for sure. But that's not possible in a
> digital city. So here such a discussion will be spun out in all of
> its details, replete with references and argumentation." It is a
> totally different form of communication, admits Stikker: "We are no
> moralists. We want the DDS population to evolve a code of behaviour
> for such cases, just like it happens on the Internet. We cannot
> prevent some people from entering DDS. And for the rest, we simply
> abide by the Dutch legislation. We will not tolerate neo-fascist
> clubs or child pornography."
>
> Stikker admits that the newsgroups, in which everyone can
> participate, are sometimes turning into a free-for-all platform.
> "Precisely because [DDS] is such a direct and anonymous way of
> communicating. Emotions therefore, can get into a high pitch. And
> that is not always to everybody's liking." DDS is now in the process
> of developing different types of newsgroups. Stikker: "We have come
> to realise that some groups work best under a situation of full
> freedom, while others are better off with the help of some kind of
> moderator. This is basically a question of conventions: a boardroom
> meeting carries a different type of conversation than the one you
> would have in a pub. At DDS, we would like to emphasize this kind of
> difference in style, so as to enable the digital citizens to choose
> between, say, the Hardrock Cafe and Tortoni."
>
> And then, what about the much vaunted digital empowerment of the
> citizens? That was, after all, the ~raison d'etre~ of the whole
> project. Local political issues, 'Amsterdam car-free'; Schiphol
> Airport's extensive extension plans; 'ROA', the new regional
> government set-up [in which Amsterdam would disappear as municipal
> body - transl.]; law and order issues; all are thoroughly discussed
> in the various news groups - but mostly by the citizens themselves.
> "the politicos have not been overwhelmingly on-line" admits Stikker.
> "It's not lack of goodwill, but they're a bit shy about the medium."
> That also, according to Stikker, is due to the style of discussion
> prevailing in the newsgroups. "Newsgroups are perceived by
> politicians as too anonymous, and therefore too threatening." Other
> discussion formats are more successful: "In our 'Question Time' -
> where politicians react to items put forward by citizens - they do
> come forward." The social democrat city secretary Guusje Terhorst,
> for instance, participated in a debate about the future of a
> 'regional urban province', while the eco-socialist Cees Hulsman
> discussed with digital citizens issues pertaining to the local job
> situation. On the other hand, ad interim mayor Frank de Grave, who
> inaugurated the DDS with much fanfare one year ago has not been very
> active since, to say nothing of Amsterdam's new mayor, Mr Patijn.
> To affirm that DDS is going to close the gap between citizens and
> politicians is somewhat of an exaggerated claim, according to
> Stikker: "It's quite clear that making information and databases
> available to the public is only the first step in this process of
> democratisation. Real empowerment of citizens through the net - one
> may for instance think of electronic referendums - presupposes a
> level of administrative openness still very much remote from our
> present institutions."
>
> The Cable System Imbroglio
> --------------------------
>
> A fine example of the tricks being played on the citizens is the
> issue of selling off KTA, Amsterdam's municipality-owned cable
> system. [Which is profitable and yet cheap ($9 pm) and convenient -
> it's in your utility bill - and even democratically organized - to
> some extent. It also runs two public access channels, beside 22
> general/commercial ones. - transl.] The Municipality is totally mute
> about the whole issue, even within DDS. "Up to now, it's been a
> black box" says Stikker, "the council authorities are not showing
> any inclination to talk about it." The problem is that KTA plays a
> crucial role in any further development of a local interactive
> network - since the system's coaxial cables offer much more
> bandwidth than the existing telephone infrastructure. It's therefore
> likely that KTA, and not the telecom, is going to be the digital
> carrier of the future at the local level.
>
> Stikker: "Presently, we are simply hooked up to the telephone
> system. But in future, it's our hope that room will be set aside on
> the cable system for a interactive network with public interest
> functions like ours, and not that it will be up to the highest
> bidder to decide who may come in and under what conditions." The
> estimated value of KTA's sell-off is around 400 million guilders
> ($225 m). According to Stikker, some of that money should already be
> earmarked for the establishment of such a public domain. "They are
> talking about that at the Town Hall, but I've got a feeling that
> awareness about the issue is of fairly recent date. And any concrete
> question you may put forward about it is considered premature."
>
> Stikker is nevertheless hopeful about the future. The idea of a
> digital city is catching on. Now Rotterdam, in Amsterdam's
> footsteps, is also setting up an interactive local area network.
> Utrecht Province is opening its digital doorways this month, with
> Groningen, The Hague and Eindhoven following suit shortly. The
> ministry of economic affairs has requested DDS to put together a
> handbook about the experience gathered over these past two years. It
> will be presented to the ministry at a formal function in February.
> Stikker: "We have now moved from the stage of being an experiment
> into that of being a phenomenon. Now we are busy consolidating what
> we have achieved up to now, that is to look how you can sustain such
> a system without becoming rigid. We want to keep DDS open and
> dynamic. At this stage there is fairly stiff pressure to go the
> commercial way. We will do that to some extent, by allowing some
> room for advertisements." That means that the Amsterdam small and
> medium enterprises will be putting ads on the local net in the near
> future, though nobody knows how those 'interactive advertisements'
> should look. Organisations and individuals who want to rent a
> 'virtual office' on the DDS pay 250 guilders ($140) a month.
>
> Stikker does not doubt one moment that DDS is catering to a really
> existing requirement. "As soon as it becomes clear that DDS is not
> merely a playground for computer freaks, you'll see all sorts of
> groups moving in." Stikker alludes to a multitude of on-line
> services such as help-lines for older and disabled people, doctors'
> services, databanks for juridical assistance, etc. "Our primary
> concern at the moment is to develop a kind of 'data-literacy' among
> people who up to now were living quite outside it. I think each and
> every association should have one person who knows how to link up
> with DDS." Individual citizens also may come into the DDS and
> fashion it their own way: "Anyone can build up her own digital
> dwelling in DDS's 'boroughs'. And you can start up all kind of
> activities from your own house: broadcasting your home videos,
> organizing jam sessions, opening your own private museum, etc."
>
> Threats
> -------
>
> "When hearing the word 'new media', many people still get the
> 'nukes'-jitter. They perceive it as a threat. I don't think this is
> a very sensible attitude, since we are inventing these technical
> tools ourselves. When I had my first experience with the Internet
> two years ago, I immediately realised that this was not merely about
> computers, but that there were a lot of implication behind these
> techniques. Everyone has now the opportunity to evolve from a
> passive consumer of information into an active provider. Suddenly,
> social and political processes take place within a very much altered
> field of reference. In this respect, technology is truly a cultural
> phenomenon."
>
> According to Stikker, the central issue with DDS is the fulfillment
> of human needs. "Everybody is equal on the net. People who never
> left their houses because they were afraid of crowds now regularly
> gather on bulletin-boards. You encounter people on the net you would
> never meet in real life. That need to communicate is very human.
> What people love most is endless chit-chat with each other." And, of
> course, that is precisely what DDS is best suited for.
> _____________________________________________________________________
>
> Published originally in Dutch in the daily ~Trouw~ (Amsterdam),
> January 7, 1995. You can visit the Digital City in Amsterdam using
> the World Wide Web, at the following URL:
>
> http://dds.nl
>
> or email to helpdesk@xxxxxx.
> You can reach Marleen Stikker at <stikker@xxxxxxxxx>.
> _____________________________________________________________________
>
> * CTHEORY is an international, electronic review of theory,
> * technology and culture. Sponsored by the Canadian Journal
> * of Political and Social Theory, reviews are posted weekly of key
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> *
> * CTHEORY is published with the assistance of the Dean of Arts
> * and Science and the Department of Political Science, Concordia
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> *
> * Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
> *
> * Editorial Board: Kathy Acker, Jean Baudrillard, Bruce Sterling,
> * David Cook, Berkeley Kaite, William Leiss, Geert Lovink, Eileen
> * Manion, Hans Mohr, Alberto Perez-Gomez, Stephen Pfohl, Andrew
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> *
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> _____________________________________________________________________
>
>
>
rma
>Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 14:09:04 -0500 (EST)
>From: ARTHUR KROKER <ctech@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>To: ctheory <ctheory@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Article 23-Digital City
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>Sender: owner-ctheory@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>Precedence: bulk
>Reply-To: ctheory@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
> CTHEORY
> THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE
>
> Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
> _____________________________________________________________________
>
> Digital City, Amsterdam
> =======================
>
> An Interview with Marleen Stikker
> ---------------------------------
>
> ~Shuschen Tan~
> ~Translated by Patrice Riemens~
>
> A digital city does not consist of bricks, concrete and
> cobblestones, but of telephone lines and electronic connections. Can
> such a city work? Last year, the ~Balie~ cultural centre started
> such an experiment, together with the 'xs4all' [ex-'hacktic'-transl]
> foundation. Anyone who's got a phone, a modem, and a computer can
> log into the digital city host computer and walk around town like a
> digital spirit: she can visit the central station, the digital cafe,
> and the electronic town hall. Marleen Stikker is the 'mayor' of
> Amsterdam Digital City (DDS), and she looks back at one year of
> promises fulfilled and unfulfilled.
>
> "Well, of course, sometimes the level of discussion in a particular
> newsgroup is no higher than on chatterboxes; and you do have the
> occasional rabid rightist spreading racist smut on the net. But
> generally speaking, life in the DDS is pretty much OK. It's just
> like an ordinary city" says Stikker, "everything you'd come across
> in ordinary life, we get here too."
>
> It was exactly one year ago this week that DDS opened her doors.
> Council elections were just coming up, and the new electronic medium
> looked just like the thing to bridge the gap between citizens and
> the authorities. The Amsterdam Municipality decided to subsidize the
> experiment, together with the (national) ministry of economic
> affairs and that of the interior. For the first time, DDS enabled
> Amsterdammers to look on-line into the council's minutes, to consult
> official policy papers and to request information from the digital
> town hall. But there were other activities, too. The 'Central
> Station' offered access to the entire Internet, one could patronize
> a digital cafe, browse through a digital kiosk, enter the digital
> house of culture and the arts, or pay a visit to a digital sex-shop,
> complete with a digital darkroom in the back. "All those ideas you
> had heard so often from the US about the new information society,
> tele-democracy, electronic citizenship, suddenly became a reality on
> DDS." Marleen Stikker is project manager at the ~Balie~ and
> initiator of DDS, and she envisaged the set-up known in the US as
> Freenet, a kind of virtual city where homeless people managed to
> demand via computer, and obtain in reality from the town's
> authorities, public showers and dressing-rooms so they could wash
> and dress appropriately when going to a job interview.
>
> Stikker, however, had never really envisaged that the interest for
> the Amsterdam experiment would take such a flight. Within a week of
> DDS's inauguration, no modem could be obtained in Amsterdam for love
> or money. The phone lines providing access to the DDS computer were
> overloaded at any hour of the day or night [they started with 20,
> -transl]. But the rush has somewhat stabilised now. The daily number
> of users now hover around 4000. One million 'pages' are being
> requested a month. A new configuration has been installed, the
> primitive menus of the beginning have now been replaced with a lot
> of graphics (photos, maps), and DDS looks poised to evolve into a
> truly virtual community.
>
> "In the beginning we were really afraid that the response would come
> only from that small band of 'computer-hackers' and BBS types you
> always encounter in this sort of project" says Stikker, who adds,
> "what you call the 'early adapters', very young kids mostly, who
> have grown up without a push button syndrome." Fortunately, it soon
> turned out that was not the case. 'Ordinary' people too, purchased a
> modem and went online. Yet Stikker is still far from satisfied about
> the rate of participation to DDS. "The digital population has a long
> way to go before being a true representation of the public at
> large." There are still far too few women, senior citizens and
> miority groups. A newsgroup that was set up especially for women was
> invaded in no time by men. Stikker: "You wouldn't believe it, all
> these guys were sitting there discussing women's issues. Till one of
> them said: look folks, if I was a woman, I wouldn't dig that!"
>
> Women are anyway something of a rarity in the virtual community.
> Stikker: "That's not surprising when you see how few women are
> sitting in front of a computer-screen. The rot is in the education
> system. You just go and have a look in the terminal rooms at
> Eindhoven technical university [Holland's largest -transl.]: out of
> 400 users, you'll see 2-3 females. It is only recently that news
> items about the Internet and the Digital Highway made inroads into
> the columns of magazines like ~Opzij~ [a large Dutch feminist
> monthly - transl.] and ELLE."
>
> We Are No Moralists
> -------------------
>
> Stikker did not feel like interfering when the women's newsgroup
> became a male territory. "That's not our job" she says, "We provide
> the platform and the tools. It's up to the people in the newsgroups
> to decide what they want, we do not interfere." Not even when things
> are uttered that in ordinary life would put you in court? "Well,
> sometimes you see things get out of hand, like with the rightist who
> went on for weeks ranting about foreigners. In real life, this would
> have resulted in fistfights for sure. But that's not possible in a
> digital city. So here such a discussion will be spun out in all of
> its details, replete with references and argumentation." It is a
> totally different form of communication, admits Stikker: "We are no
> moralists. We want the DDS population to evolve a code of behaviour
> for such cases, just like it happens on the Internet. We cannot
> prevent some people from entering DDS. And for the rest, we simply
> abide by the Dutch legislation. We will not tolerate neo-fascist
> clubs or child pornography."
>
> Stikker admits that the newsgroups, in which everyone can
> participate, are sometimes turning into a free-for-all platform.
> "Precisely because [DDS] is such a direct and anonymous way of
> communicating. Emotions therefore, can get into a high pitch. And
> that is not always to everybody's liking." DDS is now in the process
> of developing different types of newsgroups. Stikker: "We have come
> to realise that some groups work best under a situation of full
> freedom, while others are better off with the help of some kind of
> moderator. This is basically a question of conventions: a boardroom
> meeting carries a different type of conversation than the one you
> would have in a pub. At DDS, we would like to emphasize this kind of
> difference in style, so as to enable the digital citizens to choose
> between, say, the Hardrock Cafe and Tortoni."
>
> And then, what about the much vaunted digital empowerment of the
> citizens? That was, after all, the ~raison d'etre~ of the whole
> project. Local political issues, 'Amsterdam car-free'; Schiphol
> Airport's extensive extension plans; 'ROA', the new regional
> government set-up [in which Amsterdam would disappear as municipal
> body - transl.]; law and order issues; all are thoroughly discussed
> in the various news groups - but mostly by the citizens themselves.
> "the politicos have not been overwhelmingly on-line" admits Stikker.
> "It's not lack of goodwill, but they're a bit shy about the medium."
> That also, according to Stikker, is due to the style of discussion
> prevailing in the newsgroups. "Newsgroups are perceived by
> politicians as too anonymous, and therefore too threatening." Other
> discussion formats are more successful: "In our 'Question Time' -
> where politicians react to items put forward by citizens - they do
> come forward." The social democrat city secretary Guusje Terhorst,
> for instance, participated in a debate about the future of a
> 'regional urban province', while the eco-socialist Cees Hulsman
> discussed with digital citizens issues pertaining to the local job
> situation. On the other hand, ad interim mayor Frank de Grave, who
> inaugurated the DDS with much fanfare one year ago has not been very
> active since, to say nothing of Amsterdam's new mayor, Mr Patijn.
> To affirm that DDS is going to close the gap between citizens and
> politicians is somewhat of an exaggerated claim, according to
> Stikker: "It's quite clear that making information and databases
> available to the public is only the first step in this process of
> democratisation. Real empowerment of citizens through the net - one
> may for instance think of electronic referendums - presupposes a
> level of administrative openness still very much remote from our
> present institutions."
>
> The Cable System Imbroglio
> --------------------------
>
> A fine example of the tricks being played on the citizens is the
> issue of selling off KTA, Amsterdam's municipality-owned cable
> system. [Which is profitable and yet cheap ($9 pm) and convenient -
> it's in your utility bill - and even democratically organized - to
> some extent. It also runs two public access channels, beside 22
> general/commercial ones. - transl.] The Municipality is totally mute
> about the whole issue, even within DDS. "Up to now, it's been a
> black box" says Stikker, "the council authorities are not showing
> any inclination to talk about it." The problem is that KTA plays a
> crucial role in any further development of a local interactive
> network - since the system's coaxial cables offer much more
> bandwidth than the existing telephone infrastructure. It's therefore
> likely that KTA, and not the telecom, is going to be the digital
> carrier of the future at the local level.
>
> Stikker: "Presently, we are simply hooked up to the telephone
> system. But in future, it's our hope that room will be set aside on
> the cable system for a interactive network with public interest
> functions like ours, and not that it will be up to the highest
> bidder to decide who may come in and under what conditions." The
> estimated value of KTA's sell-off is around 400 million guilders
> ($225 m). According to Stikker, some of that money should already be
> earmarked for the establishment of such a public domain. "They are
> talking about that at the Town Hall, but I've got a feeling that
> awareness about the issue is of fairly recent date. And any concrete
> question you may put forward about it is considered premature."
>
> Stikker is nevertheless hopeful about the future. The idea of a
> digital city is catching on. Now Rotterdam, in Amsterdam's
> footsteps, is also setting up an interactive local area network.
> Utrecht Province is opening its digital doorways this month, with
> Groningen, The Hague and Eindhoven following suit shortly. The
> ministry of economic affairs has requested DDS to put together a
> handbook about the experience gathered over these past two years. It
> will be presented to the ministry at a formal function in February.
> Stikker: "We have now moved from the stage of being an experiment
> into that of being a phenomenon. Now we are busy consolidating what
> we have achieved up to now, that is to look how you can sustain such
> a system without becoming rigid. We want to keep DDS open and
> dynamic. At this stage there is fairly stiff pressure to go the
> commercial way. We will do that to some extent, by allowing some
> room for advertisements." That means that the Amsterdam small and
> medium enterprises will be putting ads on the local net in the near
> future, though nobody knows how those 'interactive advertisements'
> should look. Organisations and individuals who want to rent a
> 'virtual office' on the DDS pay 250 guilders ($140) a month.
>
> Stikker does not doubt one moment that DDS is catering to a really
> existing requirement. "As soon as it becomes clear that DDS is not
> merely a playground for computer freaks, you'll see all sorts of
> groups moving in." Stikker alludes to a multitude of on-line
> services such as help-lines for older and disabled people, doctors'
> services, databanks for juridical assistance, etc. "Our primary
> concern at the moment is to develop a kind of 'data-literacy' among
> people who up to now were living quite outside it. I think each and
> every association should have one person who knows how to link up
> with DDS." Individual citizens also may come into the DDS and
> fashion it their own way: "Anyone can build up her own digital
> dwelling in DDS's 'boroughs'. And you can start up all kind of
> activities from your own house: broadcasting your home videos,
> organizing jam sessions, opening your own private museum, etc."
>
> Threats
> -------
>
> "When hearing the word 'new media', many people still get the
> 'nukes'-jitter. They perceive it as a threat. I don't think this is
> a very sensible attitude, since we are inventing these technical
> tools ourselves. When I had my first experience with the Internet
> two years ago, I immediately realised that this was not merely about
> computers, but that there were a lot of implication behind these
> techniques. Everyone has now the opportunity to evolve from a
> passive consumer of information into an active provider. Suddenly,
> social and political processes take place within a very much altered
> field of reference. In this respect, technology is truly a cultural
> phenomenon."
>
> According to Stikker, the central issue with DDS is the fulfillment
> of human needs. "Everybody is equal on the net. People who never
> left their houses because they were afraid of crowds now regularly
> gather on bulletin-boards. You encounter people on the net you would
> never meet in real life. That need to communicate is very human.
> What people love most is endless chit-chat with each other." And, of
> course, that is precisely what DDS is best suited for.
> _____________________________________________________________________
>
> Published originally in Dutch in the daily ~Trouw~ (Amsterdam),
> January 7, 1995. You can visit the Digital City in Amsterdam using
> the World Wide Web, at the following URL:
>
> http://dds.nl
>
> or email to helpdesk@xxxxxx.
> You can reach Marleen Stikker at <stikker@xxxxxxxxx>.
> _____________________________________________________________________
>
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>