Woodstock, Wired For The World
The Age
Monday August 22, 1994
UNLIKE the original, Woodstock '94 was on-line and wired.
In addition to the 350,000 people at the show in Saugerties, NY, over the weekend, thousands more from as far away as Finland, Turkey and Mexico attended virtually, talking to Woodstockers live on the global web of computer networks known as the Internet.
Crowds three deep waited in the Internet Multimedia Center tent at the concert site to log on and link up.
``In 1969, I was a mere six years old, so I can't speak with too much authority here. But I would imagine that people then were trading ponchos for acid. Now, we are trading coffee for Internet access. Such are the times," wrote Ben Austin, logging in as wstock3.
The digital be-in was created by the WELL, a Sausalito-based computer community and Internet service provider.
``What we really wanted to do was make a digital scrapbook of people's impressions of this event. It's our gift to the Net," said Danica Remy, the WELL's community development specialist.
The heart of the multimedia centre is the `Woodstock Immortalizer', a program written by WELL summer intern John Cho. Visitors to the tent had their picture taken and gave an audio statement about Woodstock.
Then, on one of the computer workstations, they typed in their impressions of the festival. Meanwhile, WELL staff digitised their pictures and audio statements.
That done, they clicked OK and the whole package - picture, voice and statement - became a page on the WELL's World Wide Web server, for viewing by anyone on the Net.
One participant, who logged in as `Starchild,` described Woodstock as the concert of the decade.
The WELL also set up an International Relay Chat line, which allowed users worldwide to write directly to each other and to people at Woodstock.
A 4-metre screen at the back of the tent showed a list of everyone logged into the IRC Woodstock channel, the words they were typing scrolling down the screen as they hit the keys. A computer program translated the words into sounds and read the text aloud, more or less successfully.
``It's a complete circuit overload. You've got words being typed into the computers, words on the screen, words coming in your ears," Remy said, her voice hoarse from speaking over the roar of music, babble and the tapping of 12 computer keyboards. -- Associated Press
© 1994 The Age
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