John Seabrook

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.