It's largely a question of definition, but Murray Turoff (soon joined by Roxanne Hiltz), and abetted by Peter & Trudy Johnson-Lenz, started EIES in the mid-1970s, after Murray civilianized the work he did for the US "Civil Defense" organization. This pre-Internet setup used a central dial-in server (at 10 cps, as I recall), reached by an 800 number. It had some nice features -- choice of real name, nickname, anonymous contribution; ability to recall messages; easy to set up conferences. It did email better than email does email now, albeit without attachments. Used in early US National Science Foundation experiments on scientific community. Linton Freeman had an article on its use in social network analysis. But the big book, which went thru 2 editions, is Hiltz & Turoff, _The Network Nation_. (1978, 1993). As a nice coincidence, there is a conference in Murray & Roxanne's honour at New Jersey Inst of tech, this October. Network Nation was named after the 1973 Craven-Wellman paper, "The Network City", but Paul & I didn't dream of the Internet then. (You could look it up.) Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________ S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman For fun -- updating songs, movies and history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php Elvis wouldn't be singing Return to Sender these days _______________________________________________________________________