Cyberpunk

The lin­er notes read, in a mono­spaced type­writer font: idol@well.sf.ca.us.

So Bil­ly chose the Whole Earth ‘Lec­tron­ic Link for his con­duit to the online com­mu­ni­ty, back when it was a com­mu­ni­ty, and used it for his swan dive from fame to obscurity.

1993 was before the Web. I’m imag­in­ing Bil­ly Idol brows­ing Gopher sites search­ing for tfiles and read­ing Mon­do 2000. That was cer­tain­ly before PPP, but maybe he was dialed in with SLIP, or maybe he was using a BBS gate­way pro­vid­ed by The Well.

It’s a com­fort­ing men­tal pic­ture, even if it has noth­ing to do with reality.

Adam In Chains—Bil­ly Idol