Stewart Brand

Terry talks with New Yorker writer John Seabrook about the downside of electronic mail. Then she gets a response from Stewart Brand, the inventor of The Well, a computer conference system. . . Last January Seabrook wrote an article in the New Yorker magazine about Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates. Seabrook was flooded with electronic mail as a result, and to his surprise he was "flamed" for the first time. In Internet jargon, to be "flamed" is to receive an obscene or derogatory E-mail message. Seabrook said he'd never received anything like it before.

Commentator Stewart Brand reports on his first journey through cyberspace, a type of three-dimensional computer-generated world that humans can `fly through' by simply pointing a finger. Brand traces the evolution of Cyberspace through recent fiction.

On the eve of the 20th anniversary of man's first walk on the moon, commentator Stewart Brand shares his thoughts on space exploration and how it has changed us. Brand is founder of The Whole Earth Catalog.