Thomas Mandel; Helped Pioneer On-Line Media
Thomas Mandel, a professional futurist who helped shape the development of on-line computer media, has died. He was 49.
Mandel, who posted his farewell to the on-line community March 25, died Wednesday at Stanford Hospital of lung cancer.
Mandel was a management consultant at SRI International, a Menlo Park high-technology consulting group, where he became one of the first to bring academic principles to the work. He used a technique known as scenario-based planning to peer into the future of the publishing, paper, automobile and communications industries.
He stumbled into the world of computer bulletin boards while recovering from a back injury in 1985 and became a “cyberholic,” as he wrote in an article published in Time magazine last month.
“It began innocently enough. . . . When I finally came to my senses, the Berlin Wall had fallen and the Democrats were back in the While House.”
A strong-willed and careful writer, Mandel quickly became a fixture on the Well, a hyperliterate Sausalito-based computer system that is popular among computer specialists.
“He brought some kind of intellectual respectability to the high-tech bull session. He had solid research, facts and figures to back up his assertions. If you wanted to argue with him, you’d better do your homework,” wrote author Howard Rheingold in “The Virtual Community.”
Mandel’s growing stature as an commentator about on-line life brought him to the attention of editors at Time Inc., which hired him as a consultant to help develop electronic versions of its print magazines.
Mandel played a key role in moving Time, Fortune, People and Sports Illustrated into the commercial on-line services. Beginning in 1993, he managed the Time Online message boards on America Online, acting as arbiter and adjudicator in the sometimes contentious debates between the magazines’ journalists and readers.
Born in Chicago, Mandel was raised in Hawaii. He served a tour of duty in Vietnam after enlisting in the Marine Corps in 1965. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1972 from the University of Hawaii in futuristics, a course of study he designed himself.
Mandel was found to have inoperable cancer six months ago. In a real-life drama played out on the screens of many of the 10,000 users of the Well, he began by discussing a cough that wouldn’t go away.
After several weeks of discussion about his various medical consultations, he told the community the spots on his chest X-ray had been diagnosed as cancer.
He openly discussed the progress of his disease on forums on the Well and America Online.
