Before the internet took over the world, psychedelic rock band The Grateful Dead were among the first - and most influential - forces at the dawn of online communication.

[T]he Dead shaped far more than rock, psychedelia and '60s drug culture. Thanks to a group of music-loving tech enthusiasts, the Dead popularised what some call the first real online community. Generations later, the ideas formed in this pioneering digital space still reverberate through our daily lives.

Fans of the Dead, known as "Deadheads", were inspired by the band's embrace of all things technological, from their pioneering sound systems to their immersive multimedia visuals. Many fans were technologists and engineers themselves, working in Silicon Valley or at universities around America with access to early internet technology - which they were using by the late 1970s to swap hot commodities like Grateful Dead setlists and illegal drugs.

In the 1980s, years before the World Wide Web, a virtual online community emerged called the Well (the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link). Centered on the San Francisco Bay Area of California, the Well not only thrived in its own right, but proved to be one of the most influential factors in the birth of the internet as we know it today. And its long life was in large part thanks to fans of the Grateful Dead.

The Well was borne out of a project started by writer, activists and businessman Stewart Brand, who began producing a print publication he called the Whole Earth Catalog in the 1970s. Inspired by the back-to-the-land movement which was seeing thousands of hippies across America start up communes, the Catalog was designed to provide "access to tools" - its slogan - that anyone could use to build their lives around the ecological and spiritual principles of the movement. That meant that alongside the physical tools it offered for sustainable living - like solar stills, looms, and seed kits - it featured an array of books and pamphlets by thinkers - like Buckminster Fuller and Marshall McLuhan - meant to provide insight into how to lead better, more thoughtful lives. The Catalog was enormously influential, and not just on hippies. Apple cofounder Steve Jobs called it "one of the bibles of my generation" in a famous 2005 speech.

The Catalog proved very popular, selling a million copies by 1972. Larry Brilliant, a doctor and activist who also happened to be the owner of computer company Networking Technologies International, approached Brand with the idea of putting the Catalog online. It was a radical idea at a moment when most people had never even heard of the internet. But Brand saw the potential in giving readers of the Catalog a place to talk to each other. Brilliant provided the money and equipment while Brand helped onboard users and build the community's culture, and in 1985, the Well went online.

The Well was a "bulletin board system" (BBS), an early text-based approach to online communication that long predated the mainstream internet. People could dial into a BBS using a computer and a phone line, where they would send messages and share files. But the Well was more advanced than other BBS's. In the 1980s, these systems typically ran off a single modem, usually in someone's home, and only one person could dial in at a time. Real-time conversation between multiple users was impossible. The Well, operating out of the Whole Earth Catalog's San Francisco office, was among the first to change that. It was professionally run on command-line PicoSpan software, and sported the hardware necessary for multi-user use and conversation - fifty people could be online chatting at the same time. This was a revolutionary experience.

At its launch, the Well was populated by a diverse group of conversationalists. The canny owners gave free invitations to journalists, computer enthusiasts and other prominent figures in a culture centred on Silicon Valley-style experimentation and forward thinking. The Well emphasised independence and ownership: the login screen told users "You own your own words". Many see it as the first time user-generated content was recognised as the inherent value proposition of an electronic tool.

Eisenhart, at the time the editor of a Bay Area computer magazine MicroTimes, remembers how Grateful Dead fanzines made her think about connecting members of the fandom. "[The fanzines] would get these heartrending letters from people who thought they were the only Deadheads in their state, but now at least they could connect with other Heads," she says. "I was very drawn to the ability to overcome the barriers of time and space to connect with those you had some actual affinity with."

Before long, the Well's Grateful Dead space exploded in popularity. At $2 an hour to dial in (about $6 or £4.50 today) along with its $8 membership fee ($23 or £17.20 today), the Deadheads' devotion to endless discussion of their favourite band helped fund the entire platform.

For cyberspace denizens who wanted to engage in discussion and collaborate with the people who were shaping the future of virtual communities, the Well was the place to be. Alongside the Well's many Deadheads, members included technology journalists like John Markoff and Steve Levy; entrepreneurs Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist; Steve Case, founder of AOL; homebrew computer enthusiasts like Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak; phone phreakers and hackers; libertarians; hippies; and even the founders of Wired magazine.

The Well represents a moment in history when, as founder Stewart Brand put it in Rheingold's book, "personal computer revolutionaries were the counterculture". Long before the mainstreaming of social media and smartphones, a virtual community was a truly groundbreaking concept.

To read the complete article, see:
How the Grateful Dead built the internet(https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250618-how-the-grateful-dead-shaped-social-media)

To watch the 2021 NNP Symposium panel on the early days of online numismatics, see:
The Early Days of Online Numismatics(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0afImQ8EsYc)
The Early Days of Online Numismatics(https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/598044)

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
FIRST COIN CHAT ROOM?(https://coinbooks.org/esylum_v04n46a09.html)
THE E-SYLUM, NUMISMATISTS AND TECHNOLOGY PIONEERS(https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v10n03a06.html)
LARRY BRILLIANT, NUMISMATIC INTERNET PIONEER(https://www.coinbooks.org/v23/esylum_v23n12a31.html)
HOW WELL WE ARE FIGHTING COVID-19?(https://www.coinbooks.org/v23/esylum_v23n28a17.html)
WAYNE'S NUMISMATIC DIARY: JUNE 20, 2021 : Books, Books, Books(https://www.coinbooks.org/v24/esylum_v24n25a25.html)