Tribute to Chris Schefler,
F*** You to Michael Savage

R.I.P. Chris Schefler, pioneering Internet visionary and entrepreneur, 1966(?)-2003. My friend and former business partner.

The guy I founded Web Communications with, back in May of 1994, killed himself earlier this week. Just found out tonight (June 25th).

I first met my former business partner when I started working for Peace Action as a canvasser in 1993, out of their Santa Cruz office. Chris' outrage at the injustice of the first Gulf War had pulled him out of several years of political apathy as a ski bum and slacker student of philosophy at Humboldt State. We quickly found that we had a shared passion for computers and social justice--an odd combination, even in Santa Cruz, that made us unique among our luddite hippie friends.

The picture is from sometime in early 1995 (that's Chris, he was almost always clean shaven and well dressed), when it was just two of us and a couple of high powered computers (we actually powered some of them down and arranged them along the wall so we could get them all in the photograph - my dual processor Celeron 466 has more memory and juice than all the computers we had, combined, at the time).

The Halloween Incident

This was the classic example we always cited of why we wound up starting a business together: we were sitting at Denny's with a bunch of our hippie peacenik friends (as you can see, I fit right in), and had gotten into a really intense discussion about the potential of the Internet to transform everything (Chris really believed that the global brain was awakening - it occurs to me that part of what may have lead him to commit suicide was disillusionment resulting from Bush's invasion of Iraq), when we noticed that the other people at the table, who did not share our passion for computers, the Internet and technology, had quite literally built a little wall between us and them, with all the condiments and paper signs on the table. We always laughed about that.

Founding WebCom

I owe my career to Chris' admiration and respect for my intelligence and ability to learn - my third of WebCom was earned with a $2,000 gift from my grandparents and sweat equity, after I dropped out of Junior College. Chris put in 10 times that, in money he couldn't afford to lose (he "borrowed" it, by not paying the withholding on his consulting fees for a full year). Chris and I believed in the power of the web so strongly, that we bought our first server ($8000, purchased over the Internet), rented our first office (120 square feet in "Geek Hall" in downtown Santa Cruz, accross from the Metro bus station), and set up our first Internet connection (19.2k hardwired serial connection to in-building ISP) without ever once having even seen a graphical web page! (we were text mode Unix geeks who used "lynx" to surf the web)

Shared Values

Chris and I shared a passionate commitment to social justice and doing the right thing. Here are two links that exemplify this, and answer Savage's vicious libels against Mexican immigrants. Chris believed in this so much that he put these essay together three years after we started the business, when we were both working twelve to sixteen hour days, six to seven days a week at times. F*** you Savage, Chris was more of a human being than you'd ever dream of being.

The Transforming Power of the Internet

Chris also believed passionately in the potential of the Internet to transform human consciousness... his home page is gone, but his Gaia page discussing the Global Brain and Teilhard de Chardin is still available as an example of this.

This vision was part and parcel of why we started WebCom, we wanted to empower the average person to do exactly what I amd doing right now: speak their mind and bypass the corporate media monopoly! Chris was a pioneer, a visionary, who saw the empowering potential of self-service turnkey web hosting services years ahead of anyone else - WebCom had no competition for the first three years of its existence (and our profits reflected this)! At one point, we hosted half of the SSL enabled sites on the Internet (according to Netscape's own site). WebCom was a Medix Metrix Top 500 Internet property for the whole of its existence.

This is what we said on the WebCom About page, this is totally a Chris statement:

We believe in the fundamental value of communication and are excited about the real-time flow and exchange of ideas, dialogue, information, commerce, music and art over the global net as a powerful catalyst for innovation and creativity, efficient niche marketing and commerce, understanding, learning, grassroots community, and unprecedented synergy.

A Commitment to Freedom Of Speech - For Real

Chris and I believed passionately in freedom of speech - ironically enough, if we had been hosting Savage's web site, while we would never have sponsored or supported it, no matter how much traffic it generated, we would NEVER have kicked him off our server, no matter what threats or economic sanctions we faced. We hosted everyone, from Nazis to pro-lifers to Communists to a U.S. Coast Guard unit. We treated them all the same: we were a "common carrier". Time after time, when it came to standing up for the fundamental Constitutional principle of freedom of speech, Chris and I were there to back each other up 110% - whether it was having the German goverment block access to our server, or hackers syn-flooding our servers (AP Newswire coverage).

I am proud to have had the opportunity to work with you, Chris, proud to have helped you create a wonderful business whose employees said it was "the best place they had ever worked" and whose customers raved endlessly about our commitment to service--it was Chris who laid down the law: all customer inquiries MUST be answered within 24 hours (you would be amazed at the level of gratification this produced), proud to have created the world's first self-service web hosting company with you, and most of all, proud to have known such a passionate and noble human being (even if you did have a few faults). I know you are in a better place now. My only regret is that I never took the time to tell you this while you were still alive. Thank you for all you gave me. There will be a place in my heart for your memory forever. R.I.P. my friend.