There is much information and opinion about HCI available electronically.
I expect that from what is listed here you will be able to find what you
want.

  Keith Instone maintains Usable Web (a guide to WWW usability resources)
at <URL:http://usableweb.com/>.

  Gary Perlman's _what's happening_ column in _interactions_ magazine is a
great place to find out about HCI resources on the 'net <URL:http://www.
acm.org/~perlman/interactions/resources.html>.  He suggested the following
newsgroups are relevant for HCI researchers: comp.human-factors,
comp.cog-eng, sci.cognitive, sci.psychology, and comp.groupware.  The
human-factors group has an old FAQ list at <URL:
http://edgarmatias.com/faq/>.

  The WWW Virtual Library once had sections for HCI and Cognitive Science
(at <URL:http://hydra.bgsu.edu/HCI/> and <URL:http://www.cog.brown.edu
/pointers/cognitive.html> respectively).

  Noted hypermedia expert Jakob Nielsen writes a monthly column, called
Alertbox, about HCI with a particular focus on the WWW.  Articles are
available at <URL:http://www.useit.com/alertbox/>.

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** Section 5: I've fallen in with the wrong crowd.  Please help me out. **

Subject: Q5.1) Help! I'm new to this whole Usenet/'net thing

  The following two newsgroups contain some excellent introductory
postings: news.announce.newusers and news.newusers.questions.

  Whoever is providing you with access to Usenet should be able to give you
some basic introduction or instruction.  This isn't because they are
necessarily nice, but because if they don't at least attempt to tell you
the basics then they can't blame you when you do something awful.  If they
haven't offered you any advice or instruction then ask someone responsible
for some pointers to useful information.  I advise you not to ask another
newcomer -- that is a great way to propagate misconceptions.

  There are many introductory books about the global Internet and Usenet.
If you learn well from books then you might consider buying one or
borrowing it from a library.  Some books are available for free, others are
available for sampling online as an enticement to get you to buy them.  For
a fuller discussion of such books see: (a) the misc.books.technical
newsgroup; (b) the Unofficial Internet Book List at the rtfm.mit.edu FTP
site <URL:ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/internet-services/
book-list>.