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New Kids on the Net 139

mildly hierarchical structures known from ordinary teaching. Pre-
cisely because the usual framework of time and space is drastically
altered and physical presence replaced by written communication,
the metaphor of an “electronic classroom” is of limited use. The hes-
itant conclusion from running real is, therefore, that it is probably a
mistake to expect much philosophical content even from special-
purpose mailing lists. Since this is a somewhat negative result the
question of its relevance to the vision of a global, unrestricted, well-
informed exchange of ideas naturally arises.
Questioning students about their reluctance to involve them-
selves with real produced some straightforward, pragmatic reasons
for the partially disappointing developments. In 1994/95, the World
Wide Web had not yet achieved the overwhelming importance it
was to reach by the second part of 1996 when real was started. To
students fascinated by links, graphics and animation, simple e-mail
seemed somewhat austere and could not capture the imagination to
the extent necessary to engage in prolonged philosophical dialogue.
Confronted with a seemingly unbounded supply of intellectual free-
ware most users found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on
complicated issues when on-line. The omnipresence of web-
browsers, most of them including e-mail functionality, overshad-
owed the notion of a mailing list which does not, after all, offer
anonymous surfing to the general public. Putting real on the Web
did not, incidentally, help. Hyper-mail is helpful in making techni-
cal support accessible or in simply sharing some information with
a broad audience. It is not, for this very reason, well-suited to the
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purposes I tried to put it to. Such are the risks one has to reckon
with when entering unexplored territory. But there is a more sub-
stantial philosophical lesson to be drawn from reflecting on the de-
velopment of give-l and real.
In comparing the two lists, some of the enthusiasm surrounding
give-l can be seen from a different perspective. I have hinted at the
ambivalent nature of exempting the body from what is otherwise a
characteristically communicative setting. This holds for mailing lists
(or chats and MUDs) in general. There is, however, an additional as-
pect unique to foundational moments in global electronic communi-
cation. When first confronted with a technical tool like the Listserv
software an almost automatic reaction is to run together two differ-
ent projections, namely the procedural advantages of the technology
and its perceived usefulness to the particular situation one finds
oneself in. Such technologies—at a first encounter—present them-
selves as a hybrid between context-independent promises and very