Almost immediately the _Time_ board teemed with lively talk on issues ranging from Clintonian stupidities to, yes, the future of the electronic medium. I felt much more comfortable here than in the message area of the _N & O_; people on the _Time_ board spoke their minds more freely. Some amusing posts showed up. Amazingly, the software let people key in their own identities, and the late Henry Luce, cofounder of _Time_, arose from the grave as luce@pastmytime.com. One message appeared, truthfully or not, with the name of a staffer at _U.S. News & World Report_. He promised that _U.S. News_ would set up an outpost on the Net soon, and someone at _Time_ twitted him for not answering e-mail promptly. Despite my fondness for the reporting in _U.S. News_, I had to agree. Researching a Net guide for political activists, I’d written _U.S. News_ six months ago and had yet to receive an answer. Time Warner also showed network savvy by following the example of _GNN_ and similar publications and providing some hypertext pointers to the rest of the Internet, rather than expecting readers to stay within its own area. Time Warner even enlisted some of its household names in the cause. The electronic version of _Entertainment Weekly_, for example, did not just review Madonna or Springsteen or the latest Hollywood films; it also directed people to popular, entertainment-oriented sites on the Net itself by way of hypertext links. I still wanted to see many, many more links—a strength of _GNN_. But I suspected that would come in time. Planning the Pathfinder service, Time Warner had even consulted with the publisher of _Wired_. “They’re providing real news, not just PR blather or sales areas for their products,” said Chip Bayers, the managing editor of _HotWired_, the _Wired_ offshoot on the Web. And he was right. I myself was no cheerleader for Time Warner in some ways—I worried about media concentrations.[4.16] But here the Suits deserved their due. _HotWired_ offered avant-garde graphics on the Web along with services such as bulletin boards and free archives; I was pleased, yet hardly surprised. _Wired_, after all, was still a bit of an upstart despite heavy investment from a corporate arm of the powerful Newhouse family.[4.17] But Time Warner was different—the epitome of the journalistic and Hollywood establishments, a company with many benefits from the status quo. I recalled the upbeat stories that _Time_ had run about the world of 500-channel television. Such articles betrayed far more tolerance of the “one to many” broadcast model, as opposed to the newer, more anarchistic model of the Net. Many in the Time Life tower, especially on the entertainment side, might still harbor these less adventurous visions. And yet the company was now spreading its bets around. That seemed sensible enough, given the chilliness that some test markets had shown interactive TV.