The Company Therapist (dot.com)

Some of us have long argued that culture isn't being destroyed in cyberspace, but is actually being reborn here. Many journalists, politicians and educators still haven't grasped this, perhaps because they rarely visit or report on sites like The Company Therapist. The public still often thinks of the Net in terms of thievery, retailing, pornography, and hacking and cracking, but the arts are rapidly moving online, sometimes in quite revolutionary ways. This hi-tech story-telling experiment, which turns storytelling upside down and uses hypertext to create a collaborative narrative, is a terrific case in point.

When the employees of a fictional San Francisco tech company need psychiatric help -- a not-unheard-of phenomenon out there -- they turn to their fictional Company Therapist, Dr. Charles Balis. I've used the word "fictional" twice because after a few visits to the site, readers quickly forget that this isn't a real shrink working with the stressed-out employees of a real company.

Balis, who completed his psychiatric residency at Columbia Presbyterian in New York City, headed west to set up his own practice, we learn. A shrewd and conservative businessmen, he contracted with CalaCare, Inc., an HMO, and agreed to spend more than half his time providing mental health counseling for Silicon Impressions, Inc., a huge hardware and software firm.

On the site, the stories of Dr. Balis' work unfold through his files, written collaboratively by "patients" who visit the site and create identities. We see transcripts of therapy sessions, phone conversations, personnel records -- even doodles. Over time, the continuing stories of Dr. Balis' patients, their psychological problems and dramas, allow the kind of character development normally associated with well-crafted novels, but not with websites.

The stories are almost shockingly realistic and compelling. We get drawn into them, often forgetting that they aren't quite real. Or are they? Some of the created characters -- patients Helen Gregory, Decker Jenkins -- are so contemporary and recognizable that they surely must reflect, at least in part, the lives of their creators.

The site sees itself not only as entertainment but as an educational vehicle to help writers polish their work -- an idea with broad applicability for other professions, from medicine to the law to other arts.

According to Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science and Technology, a book edited by Stephen Wilson where I first learned of the site, a company called Pipsqueak Productions devised this hyperfictional environment as the perfect vehicle for collaborative fictional storytelling in cyberspace. Very original move. A therapist's office is a font of narrative, a great device for collecting different stories, honing different voices, full of interesting characters with evolving problems and case histories, able to draw on telephone calls and office transcripts, a place to discuss theories of treatment. Balis's world -- the pressured, constantly changing world of hi-tech - emerges vividly. Updated daily, The Company Therapist provides nearly two years of well-organized, easily accessible stories, doctor's notes and other materials. Since it's written by its collective audience rather than a single author or the site's creators, the range of tales and voices is fascinating.

Every contributor retains a recognizable style, yet is still able to move the collective narrative forward. In fact, many stories are moving forward at once, relating both to "work" and the personal lives of the patients, each told in an idiosyncratic voice and representing the challenges of a different life, yet collectively, painting a vivid portrait of a culture. This site is unique on the Web, both for its originality and quality of design, strong testimony to the notion online, technology and art are fusing to create things that are as new as they are exciting.

Comments

Re:Fist Sport

[ringbarer]

In Nazi Germany, Jews were labelled as being 'different' by being forced to wear Yellow Stars. After the introduction of Subscriptions, Slashdot culture has divided into the "elite" and the "unwashed masses". Talk was made of letting subscribers have Gold Stars next to their Usernames.

For a pseudo-libertarian gestalt like Slashdot culture, to suddenly shift to a "two tier" system of "haves" and "have nots" is clearly WRONG. How can we believe the credo "Information wants to be free" when Slashdot has taken one more step towards becoming a subscription only format.

Look at the ghetto of -1 postings. Good, well reasoned, thought out postings, such as this one, are doomed to languish at the bottom of the pile. Rendered UNREADABLE by the actions of crapflooders and page wideners. Slashdot has the power to fix the page widening posts, but CHOOSES NOT TO.

Why? Because they only appear on Internet Explorer, and only appear at -1. Therefore abusers of the Slashdot community are clearly targetting a supposed 'minority' of users.

This is just another form of racism. I choose to use Internet Explorer as it is the most stable, most reliable, most standards compliant browser available. To ask an IE user to change their browser would be like asking a Jew to grow their foreskin back. DISCRIMINATION.

I also choose to read at -1, for this is where the truth is written.

Ask yourself why Slashdot would WANT to discriminate so blatently against -1 IE browsers. The answer is simple.

CONTROL. The editors seek to viciously and pitifully control what YOU read, but yet they still espouse freedom as if it still means something to them.

Forms of filtering the adverts out, (Which, if you check the latest hooks they've added to Slash, shall soon become more disruptive. Pop-unders, interstitials, etc.) are treated with, of all things, FUD by the Slashdot editors. Then code is added INSTANTANEOUSLY to Slashdot to remove the Ad filtering userbox code. BUT WHY DON'T THEY FIX PAGE WIDENING.

Clearly Slashdot is dying, and shall surely become the haven of Warez traders. For Warez traders ALSO espouse freedom, whilst trading their foul DDos code to restrict the freedom of others.

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for posting your worthless slop at 2, you fucking clown.