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:The Desperate Search for Meaning

[pyrrho]

the web didn't remake or begin to remake culture in the way your expectations idealized. But it is remaking culture. No, it's not a new compelling medium to enlighten people and make them interested in things that they had ignored, things that bore them.

It makes people interested in things they are already interested in. It puts them in contact with information and groups of people they don't have access too. It's small influence (like the force of gravity is small) is that, slowly but surely, you realize, if you think of an interesting question, you can find interesting answers. It's the most passive thing imaginable. There is nothing more boring than expecting the net to entertain you... but come up with a good question, or think about an old hobby you dropped in the past, or ask yourself, "I wonder what Pitcairn is like" and you will find it the Most Entertaining thing.

I believe that elightenment comes from awakening the hunger for knowledge, and the net awakens that. Like all human change, it will look slow to us individuals.

Oh yeah, the other thing it, it's changed the culture, and you just don't notice because the culture has already normalized the change.

Re:Katz spinning his wheels

[mvdwege]

I hope you get to read this, but I had a short email exchange with Jon on this very subject, and he admits that not being concise enough is a weakness in his style.

This is hardly something he only admits in private. He also admitted in the Slashdot Interview he did.

I think nicely and politely pointing out the mistakes he makes (like you just did) is more conducive to Jon working on his flaws than all the random flaming that goes on here.

Mart