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Most of us pass through a number of developmental stages on the web although of course not everyone passes through all of them. Many people never use chat, for example, and hardly anyone knows what a MOO is, let alone spends time in one. Most of us don’t have the capacity to download the faster and fancier websites, and people browsing from behind a firewall are excluded from a wide range of activities, especially live communications and sometimes downloading files and software too. Movies and sound are beyond the reach of much of the connected world, though the situation is improving fast as bandwidth increases and more people get broadband connections. But since a lot of us use the web in the office, where audio is considered antisocial, we often browse with our speakers turned off, unaware of a whole world of sound effects, music and voices.
But pretty well all of us who are on the web use email. For many of us, email IS the web. In the words of those who know, it is the killer app. So for the Child taking their first baby steps, an email account is imperative. And since we are looking to the future, let us make this one a spivak child, with spivak pronouns to play with
Developmental Profile: Stage 1 Child
Has recently gained access to the web and obtained an email address. Generally enthusiastic but clumsy and doesn’t quite ‘get it’ yet. Has only had time to discover 1% of the features available, so operates in blissful ignorance. Often fails to read email attachments as e does not know that they exist, let alone how to open them. Generally slow to respond to email because e seldom logs on and also because e has not yet realised that email is a two-way medium and senders usually expect a reply. New users often find it hard to grasp that email should be taken as seriously as snailmail or phonecalls. Likely to make mistakes in the setup and operation of eir computer due to simply not being aware of its potential and abilities. Often believes the machine is broken when it simply needs preferences altering. Gets very frustrated and blames the machine, the internet, eir ISP, and the designers of sites e cannot access.
Worried about:
doing it right; being swamped by email and attacked by viruses and hackers; getting addicted; spending too much money; having cash fraudulently drawn from eir bank account; being exposed to pornography.
Excited about:
access to information; connecting with long lost friends and relatives; being exposed to pornography.
Developmental Profile: Stage 2 Naïve Adolescent
Now e is engaging closely with people online via email, chat or discussion boards. Has made several very close friends and sensed the powerful intimacy online can engender. The desire to connect may have inspired em to create eir own homepage containing personal information and perhaps even a photograph. Doing this has increased eir webskills and e now knows something about writing HTML, creating digital images with a camera or a scanner, and uploading them to the web. Alternatively, e may have sent this material to one of eir new online friends and they have created the page. E now has eir own url, which e releases perhaps to the world or perhaps just to trusted friends. E now sleeps less and stays up late at night, chatting with people in other parts of the world. E always knows what time it is in New York and Sydney. Some relationships have developed into sending letters and parcels by snailmail; talking on the phone; arranging fleshmeets. Some may have moved into online sex, a keyboard variation of phone sex which is at its most effective for the highly ambidextrous. During this time it is likely that e will experiment with groups outside eir usual way of life, including fringe religious, spiritual and political organisations. This stage involves all or any of: euphoria; sex; intensity; fascination; speed; timezones; ecstasy; gender; joy; intellect; community; laughter; mind-expansion; fun; and learning.
Worried about:
the amount of time e is now spending online; the vast amount of disk-space taken up with emails and logs of online encounters; existing relationships with family and friends, which have taken a nose-dive since e met eir online friends; minutiae of squabbles and intimacies in the online world ranging from small disagreements to major betrayals.
Excited about:
the intensity of online; the new facets of emself now being released show that what were previously only dreams of who e might be are becoming closer to reality; e is discovering a new sexuality / playfulness / level of friendship; the craft of making web-pages and other forms of programming may be capturing eir imagination – e is acquiring a whole new set of technical skills and fluencies.
Developmental Profile: Stage 3 Hurt Adolescent
Hurt and be hurt. IRL adolescents push the boundaries and the result can be car-smashes; drug overdoses; religious and political manias; sports accidents; and suicidal depressions. The equivalents for net adolescents (who can be of any physical age) include being both the victims and the perpetrators of various destructive behaviours: damaging acts of psychological manipulation fuelled by the euphoria of anonymity; the results of uncontrolled behaviour caused by the freedom from RL repression; criminal acts including fraud and abuse, and of course the famous net-stalking which in the early days of the web had everyone in a panic. These days it is mentioned less frequently, though it still continues in both physical and psychological behaviour.
Worried about:
whether e can ever trust anyone again; whether there is some fatal flaw in eir psychological makeup which creates a vulnerability to abuse (or a desire to abuse); the damage e may have caused to friends and family due to eir immersion in web-life
Excited about:
restoring and recovering aspects of physical life which have been ignored; revisiting offline relationships; finding a way to keep the best parts of net-life and get rid of the rest.
Developmental Profile: Stage 4 Adult
Having passed through the passions of net-adolescence and been burned by the wilder edges of the web, e now reaches a level of emotional intelligence wherein e moves through the internet with knowledge and a fluency which could only be reached after a period of learning and development. But some users, especially those who choose never to experiment, will, just as in Real Life, pass from childhood to adulthood and never experience the trials and tribulations of net-adolescence. And as in real life, this is a sad state of affairs, because it means they move through the web with no experiential understanding of its full potential. They may see the logic of it, and know a great deal about it, but if they have never properly lived there they are certainly missing out. The adult on the web either knows how to handle the whole environment or has made decisions to operate in a limited and known safe area. The latter will always be vulnerable to error or attack, but then real life is the same. The adult worries much less; is cautious, sensible and knows how to protect emself and eir system from attack and error. Life may never again be the roller coaster it was for the wet-behind-the-ears naïve adolescent but this is now familiar and well-trodden terrain. Keep to the well-lit areas, don’t speak to strangers, and you’ll be just fine : )
Is there a stage beyond this? I suspect there is but few of us have reached it yet, although many aspire to do so. Perhaps it is the post-human, where flesh and information blend into a single/multiple corpus, a new conception of the body and machine, a new sense of self. Whatever it is, I don’t think it will be shiny and silver, but more probably oily, smelly, and tactile
Sue Thomas was born in England in 1951. She is Professor of New Media in the Faculty of Humanities, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, and a partner in DMU's Institute of Creative Technologies. She is also Course Leader of the Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media which she devised with Kate Pullinger.
a mix of flesh and machine short-listed for several prizes including the Arthur C Clarke Award (London: The Women's Press, 1992; New York: Overlook, 1993)
Wild Women: Contemporary Short Stories By Women Celebrating Women (New York: Overlook, 1994; London: Vintage, 1994). 
