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Last Revised: FEB. 1, 1997

READERS MIXED REACTIONS TO CYBERSPACE MOVE

by MARY MOORE

Dear Mary: We're not on the Internet, nor can we afford to be. I feel very badly about your discontinuance of a printed newsletter---and I agree it's the way to go!? Hopefully, by the time our daughter (16 mo) is 4 or 5 we'll be able to own a decent computer and hook up to you again in cyberspace. Good luck.

Craig Stephens, Santa Rosa

Dear Mary: Here's hoping you will be both "on line" and "on paper" by your goal of 1998........ Good luck on the challenges of cyberspace.

Woody Schwartz, Sebastopol

Dear Mary: I appreciate the problems you have getting out a concrete, hold it in your hand, traditional technology newspaper. I am sure your decision to replace the S.C.F.P.with an "on-line" version was not lightly taken.

Nevertheless, as people who believe the "computer revolution" has done and will do vastly more to increase the police power of the corporate state than it is likely ever to do to increase personal autonomy or collective power, and as people who choose neither to be "online" nor to own a computer, we cannot endorse your current practice.

While a printed periodical is potentially available to anyone who can read, the insubstantial, transitory flow of electrons that constitute "Cyberspace" is a necessarily elitist medium. We love what you do--but not this new way of doing it.

Tania Bedford & Richard Pfeffer

Dear Mary: I spoke with you on the phone the other day and I also spoke with Carol Miller about the medical marijuana law. She said you were looking for personal editorial type stories in regards to Prop. 215............I am sorry to hear that the SONOMA COUNTY FREE PRESS won't be in print for a while but I do hope you find the success you are looking for in the internet and then return again to print as well.

Sunny Bell, Camp Meeker

Dear Mary: I am so sorry that the FREE PRESS will be closed for '97, but I think you need time to recharge. May you be blessed with good news and a granting of your best wishes in '97.

Mei Nakano, Sebastopol

Editors note: We would like feedback from the" netheads" out there as to how you would respond to the folks who don't like our shift from print to cyberspace. I do agree with some of those points about it being a currently elitest venue but don't see how ignoring it will make it go away. Seems to me we should use it to get out our own points of view. The "left" is underusing this medium. New (and old) readers....what do you have to say???