I remember encountering him in a WELL topic about Marty Rimm in 1995 and thinking, wow, he read, learned, and evolved, but it turns out he didn't. Seabrook still participates in the WELL community, but for him the Net has a number of failings. It's too easy to bother someone you don't know. It's really more about getting attention than getting information. It's a place where the heady collegiality of getting a time-value publication to print simply can't exist.
People are meanies there.
It isn't just that he stumbled onto the Infobahn like a typical Delphi refugee. It isn't just that even now, years later, he writes about the hostility he encountered on the Net with a resentment and aggression that seems brand new and almost poignant. For John Seabrook, the Net is above all a stage. Retreating into the comfort of an on-line service, Seabrook never went any deeper than that. Seabrook's vision of the Internet is alternately laughable and painful, a patchwork quilt of misunderstanding, narcissism, and occasional flashes of insight.