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

New Media, New Works

[cporter]

Someone... somewhere... observed that the development of new 'works'* - the creation of whole new genres, real paradigm shifts, progresses in stages:
- The new medium becomes available.
- Artists create works in the new medium that mimic works in the old medium, learning in the process.
- Artists move on to new ideas in the new medium, launching a whole new class of art or fiction.

This can be illustrated by the examples of photography, film, television, etc, for all of history. It kind of disappoints me that people are using the web to imitate television, books, newspapers, etc, instead of doing more with the medium. Maybe we're still just getting there.

A good, if dated, book on the subject of creativity and possibilities on the net (especially concerning non-linear narrative) is Hamlet on the Holodeck by Janey Murray.

* (referring to artistic works, but I think it applies to other types as well. programming?)

Translation from Katz-speak

[mbrubeck]

If this story were written by anyone other than Jon Katz:

Some of us have long argued that culture isn't being destroyed in cyberspace, but is actually being reborn here.

Hi there.

Many journalists, politicians and educators still haven't grasped this,

I was bored today...

perhaps because they rarely visit or report on sites like The Company Therapist.

...but I found this nifty web page.

The public still often thinks of the Net in terms of thievery, retailing, pornography, and hacking and cracking,

I showed it to my co-workers, but they didn't seem interested.

but the arts are rapidly moving online, sometimes in quite revolutionary ways.

But they're a bunch of losers anyways.

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.

I mean, this site is like, SO COOL.

katzism

[I Want GNU!]

The stories are almost shockingly realistic and compelling. We get drawn into them, often forgetting that they aren't quite real. Or are they?

This reminds me of The Matrix. I watched the movie and often forgot that it wasn't quite real. Or is it??

Katz spinning his wheels

[electroniceric]

While I hesitate to jump on the bandwagon of people who like to abuse Jon Katz for sport, articles like this do make it seem like he's spinning his wheels.

I have not read through Katz's earlier work at Wired, when he might have been accountable to an editor, but certainly most of his essays here are the sort of vague, grandiose pontification that any proper college writing teacher should cull out of a student. I recall being endlessly frustrated in college by the idea of having to write 4 pages about 5 lines of some piece of literature, but upon leaving school, I discovered that people are much more interested in what you can say cogently about a small point
than hearing you sketch sweeping paint-by-number landscapes you can't possibly hope to fill in.

In short, Katz, your ideas are moderately interesting but very overstated, and by focussing them into sharper points about tighter subjects, you'd make them interesting to read. I wish you luck tightening your writing.