A journalist wonders...
Cameron Laird
Dan Kennedy <dken...@shore.net> wrote:
>Cameron Laird (cla...@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM) wrote:
>: In article <4c8s4a$r...@shore.shore.net>, Dan Kennedy
>: <dken...@shore.net> sermonized:
>
>: >I've also found that some of the real Internet veterans I respect most,
>: >and who have been the most help to me, spend very little time on Usenet.
>
>: You've become too subtle for me. Are you advising, "Don't
>: believe everything you read, and don't think that prolific
>: posters are more trustworthy than their quieter counter-
>: parts"? I can think of no reason to soften that message,
>: if that's what it is.
>
>What I'm saying is that there are a number of Internet veterans I've
>interviewed who are really involved in fascinating things, such as
>building civic networks, thinking about the future in interesting ways,
>fighting for free speech, etc., who I've discovered spend little or no
>time on Usenet. It makes sense -- they're spending their time doing
>something productive (unlike me).
.
.
.
Yup. A stronger form of this was already canonized a
few years ago as--as what? Now I've forgotten; was it
Jorn's Dismal Theorem? Someone formerly active in a.c.i
(Clay Shirky? Jorn Barger? ...) advanced a nice
formulation of this, along the lines of an inverse
quantitative relation between fulfilling life and news-
group activity. For a more recent expression of the same,
see
Snyder, Joel
1995 "Get Real", Internet World,
volume 7, number 2, pages
92-94 (February 1996)
(this might eventually show up on-line, but *IW* lags its
electronic publication by a few months, I believe).
If you truly want to pursue this theme, there are at least
a couple directions you can take it. You can personalize
the point by referring, for example, to cultural icon Ted
Nelson, who invented "hypertext" as much as anyone, but
apparently never connects to the 'Net himself <URL:http://
www.aus.xanadu.com/>. Another possibility is to demon-
strate how far from reality some leading theoreticians
have drifted, precisely because they do not participate
in the messiness of real Usenet behavior; Nelson is also
an example of that.
--
Cameron Laird http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
cla...@NeoSoft.com +1 713 623 8000 #227
+1 713 996 8546 FAX
Ronda Hauben
: In article <4c99u5$7...@shore.shore.net>,
: Dan Kennedy <dken...@shore.net> wrote:
: >Cameron Laird (cla...@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM) wrote:
: >: In article <4c8s4a$r...@shore.shore.net>, Dan Kennedy
: >: <dken...@shore.net> sermonized:
: >
: >: >I've also found that some of the real Internet veterans I respect most,
: >: >and who have been the most help to me, spend very little time on Usenet.
Some of the Internet veterans don't spend much time on Usenet and
never have as Usenet and Internet are not the same.
There are, on the other hand, Usenet pioneers who were
on Usenet in its earliest days who continue on Usenet. Several
months ago I posted a comment about a Wall Street Journal story
that claimed that Usenet pioneers were fleeing Usenet, without
the reporter doing any real investigation on Usenet. A number
of old timers on Usenet posted making clear to the world that
they were still around :-)
Also when I've posted drafts of articles I have been working
on about the early days of Usenet, a number of folks who were
around in the early days and continue to participate in Usenet
have responded with helpful comments.
So perhaps folks who have been of help to you no longer are
on Usenet, but there are lots of folks still on Usenet and who
have been for many years and who continue to contribute to Usenet.
BTW I'm not sure who you would propose qualifies as an "Internet
veteran" or who has been helpful to you and in what ways. What
help are you asking for?
: >
: >: You've become too subtle for me. Are you advising, "Don't
: >: believe everything you read, and don't think that prolific
: >: posters are more trustworthy than their quieter counter-
: >: parts"? I can think of no reason to soften that message,
: >: if that's what it is.
: >
: >What I'm saying is that there are a number of Internet veterans I've
: >interviewed who are really involved in fascinating things, such as
: >building civic networks, thinking about the future in interesting ways,
: >fighting for free speech, etc., who I've discovered spend little or no
: >time on Usenet. It makes sense -- they're spending their time doing
: >something productive (unlike me).
: .
But contributing to Usenet is something productive. It seems you are
claiming that it isn't and while that seems to be the position of
most of the reports I have seen about Usenet in the U.S. professional
press, it is a grave misrepresentation.
: .
: .
: Yup. A stronger form of this was already canonized a
: few years ago as--as what? Now I've forgotten; was it
: Jorn's Dismal Theorem? Someone formerly active in a.c.i
: (Clay Shirky? Jorn Barger? ...) advanced a nice
: formulation of this, along the lines of an inverse
: quantitative relation between fulfilling life and news-
: group activity. For a more recent expression of the same,
Maybe you should also see "The Net and the Netizens" based on
research done on the Net demonstrating that many folks have
had their life significantly enriched by the contributions
that have come from being on Usenet or other parts of the Net.
That article, in addition to others demonstrating both the
hard work and real contributions of many folks to create Usenet
and the Internet and why this is such an important new communication
media for today and the future.
The netbook "Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and
the Internet" is available online.
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/project_book.html
: see
: Snyder, Joel
: 1995 "Get Real", Internet World,
: volume 7, number 2, pages
: 92-94 (February 1996)
Why does it seem that the professional press and magazines
like Internet World are so willing to publish articles that
claim that Usenet is something worth staying away from, rather
than articles that try to understand the important impact
Usenet is having and the hard battle it has taken folks to
build it and to continue to contribute to it despite the
commercial onslaught against it?
A while ago I wrote Internet World suggesting that they
try to make their magazine a serious examination of the
importance of Usenet and the Internet and produce a magazine
like that produced in the early days of Unix Review when
it contained interviews with Unix pioneers discussing the
important issues of the Unix community and of Unix
development, it contained valuable articles assessing the
impact of Unix, how to articles that were extremely helpful,
etc.
I never got a response. And instead they produced a magazine
that for its early issues glorified commercialization and
businesses uses of the Internet and now continues
to gloss the surface of issues or panders to business.
: (this might eventually show up on-line, but *IW* lags its
: electronic publication by a few months, I believe).
: If you truly want to pursue this theme, there are at least
: a couple directions you can take it. You can personalize
: the point by referring, for example, to cultural icon Ted
But the point isn't worth pursuing. The real honest to
goodness technical and social (in the sense of society)
value of Usenet and the Internet are worth pursuing.
And whether it is pioneers (by whom I mean folks who helped
to build Usenet in its earliest days) many of whom are still
on Usenet and still contributing to Usenet or veterans
(by whom I mean folks who have been contributing to Usenet
over a period of time) and who continue to contribute, or
the newbies who are just getting onto Usenet but who are
making efforts to contribute even though they are new -- these
are the folks who should be written about, not those who
have for whatever reason stopped contributing to Usenet.
: Nelson, who invented "hypertext" as much as anyone, but
: apparently never connects to the 'Net himself <URL:http://
: www.aus.xanadu.com/>. Another possibility is to demon-
Did Ted Nelson ever connect to Usenet? I know he was
on the Well at one point, and his book Computer Lib is an
important manifesto for the early efforts to make time
sharing available to all.
: strate how far from reality some leading theoreticians
: have drifted, precisely because they do not participate
And isn't the wonder of Usenet that it doesn't really have
leading theoreticians? But rather that everyone can be
and is its theoretician. Therefore it would seem more
fruitful to pursue the theme of what are the theoreticians
on Usenet saying about the importance and potential that
they see of Usenet.
In fact some of the significance of the word Netizen is that it
means that folks on the Net recognize the important communication
breakthrough Usenet and the Internet have achieved and Netizens
are those who work to make Usenet and the Internet continue
to grow and flourish.
Thus the very concept of the word Netizen is that it is the
result of the existence of the Net and of users who recognize
the importance of the Net. Therefore, it is interesting that
there has been so little exploration in the U.S. professional
press of the origins and importance of the word Netizen.
There was, however, recently a conference in Japan about
Netizens and the Netizen Revolution and on January 1, 1996
a story appeared in the Nishi-nippon newspaper about the
Netizen Revolution and the importance of Netizens.
: in the messiness of real Usenet behavior; Nelson is also
: an example of that.
There are important lessons to be learned from those who
continue to contribute to Usenet.
Currently I am looking at the early days of Usenet and
how folks contributed then. Reading through these old
posts is helpful to seeing how many of the kinds of
valuable work that went on in the earliest days of Usenet
continue and are expanded in the Usenet of today.
I've wanted to begin posting some of the interesting posts
that I have found from the early days of Usenet as a
sort of "posts from the past" and will try to do so in the
next month or two.
I've added alt.amateur-comp to the newsgroup line since this is
the kind of issue we continue to discuss in the Amateur Computerist.
: --
: Cameron Laird http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
: cla...@NeoSoft.com +1 713 623 8000 #227
: +1 713 996 8546 FAX
Ronda
ro...@panix.com
au...@cleveland.freenet.edu
-----
Ronda Hauben The Amateur Computerist au...@cleveland.freenet.edu
vol 6 no 2/3 "The Netizens and the Internet" free via email
"Net Cultural Assumptions" "What Is a Netizen" "Licklider's Vision"
"Ethics and the Internet" "The Internet: Maintaining Diversity" etc.
Cameron Laird
>Cameron Laird (cla...@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM) wrote:
.
.
>But contributing to Usenet is something productive. It seems you are
.
.
.
>Maybe you should also see "The Net and the Netizens" based on
>research done on the Net demonstrating that many folks have
>had their life significantly enriched by the contributions
>that have come from being on Usenet or other parts of the Net.
but I do salute your work, as I have done here be-
fore. The question as I understood it, though, is
a bit more subtle; it's not whether Usenet enriches
lives, but whether it's a net positive, or, perhaps
even better, whether we can manage systems so as to
make it a net positive.
.
.
.
>: Snyder, Joel
>: 1995 "Get Real", Internet World,
>: volume 7, number 2, pages
>: 92-94 (February 1996)
>
>Why does it seem that the professional press and magazines
>like Internet World are so willing to publish articles that
>claim that Usenet is something worth staying away from, rather
>than articles that try to understand the important impact
>Usenet is having and the hard battle it has taken folks to
>build it and to continue to contribute to it despite the
>commercial onslaught against it?
we've hashed out in this space before. Please note,
though, that Snyder explicitly labels his article as
a counterpoint to the main theme of the February 1996
issue, which is precisely all the benefits the Inter-
net can bring. *IW* is one place I do *not* see a
bias of the sort you claim against Usenet.
>
>A while ago I wrote Internet World suggesting that they
>try to make their magazine a serious examination of the
>importance of Usenet and the Internet and produce a magazine
>like that produced in the early days of Unix Review when
>it contained interviews with Unix pioneers discussing the
>important issues of the Unix community and of Unix
>development, it contained valuable articles assessing the
>impact of Unix, how to articles that were extremely helpful,
>etc.
>
>I never got a response. And instead they produced a magazine
>that for its early issues glorified commercialization and
>businesses uses of the Internet and now continues
>to gloss the surface of issues or panders to business.
write to an individual there, rather than to the
faceless corporate identity. Your experience is dif-
ferent from mine in a number of ways; interestingly,
what tipped my initial decision to subscribe to *IW*
was Jeff Ubois' monthly interviews. I like 'em. I
understand what you're saying about (early) *Unix Re-
view*, but I gotta think your vision is a bit cloudy
if all you can see in comparing it with *IW* now is
that the latter is a pawn of commercial interests.
.
.
.
>And isn't the wonder of Usenet that it doesn't really have
>leading theoreticians? But rather that everyone can be
>and is its theoretician. Therefore it would seem more
>fruitful to pursue the theme of what are the theoreticians
>on Usenet saying about the importance and potential that
>they see of Usenet.
.
.
>I've wanted to begin posting some of the interesting posts
>that I have found from the early days of Usenet as a
>sort of "posts from the past" and will try to do so in the
>next month or two.
>
>I've added alt.amateur-comp to the newsgroup line since this is
>the kind of issue we continue to discuss in the Amateur Computerist.
.
.
.
Cameron Laird
.
.
.
>a couple directions you can take it. You can personalize
>the point by referring, for example, to cultural icon Ted
>apparently never connects to the 'Net himself <URL:http://
>www.aus.xanadu.com/>. Another possibility is to demon-
>have drifted, precisely because they do not participate
>an example of that.
.
.
'Long as we're starting off the New Year by excoriating
journalists, I want to call *Byte* to task for their
November 1995 "Commentary: Things to Come", ostensibly
by Ted Nelson (I poked around www.byte.com a couple of
times, looking for an on-line version of this, but couldn't
find it within the time limit I set myself). I suspect
this piece isn't an essay in the conventional sense, but
an edited interview (true? I haven't gone to the trouble
of tracking down someone at *Byte* who knows). That feels
mildly deceptive to me. In fact, introducing Nelson with
two short sentences strikes me just now as irresponsible;
he's such a dense combination of visionary and loon--well,
eccentric--that it's hazardous slotting him into the con-
text that *Byte* has been using for *vox populi*. The
larger principle, of course, is one that underlies much of
the resentment and frustration that wells up in a.i.m-c:
even when there's agreement about data, journalistic pre-
sentation--graphical layout, tone, even page placement--can
powerfully affect a reader's understanding.
Jorn Barger
Cameron Laird <cla...@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM> wrote:
[...]
>Jorn's Dismal Theorem? Someone formerly active in a.c.i
>(Clay Shirky? Jorn Barger? ...) advanced a nice
>formulation of this, along the lines of an inverse
>quantitative relation between fulfilling life and news-
"The more interesting
your life becomes
the less you post
...and vice versa."
Read it and weep...
Ronda Hauben
In a previous article, cla...@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (Cameron Laird) says:
>In article <4cb9tl$r...@panix3.panix.com>, Ronda Hauben <ro...@panix.com> wrote:
>>Cameron Laird (cla...@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM) wrote:
> .
> .
> .
>>But contributing to Usenet is something productive. It seems you are
>That's a good proposition to debate.
I will be glad to discuss it. Are you saying that it's not productive?
> .
> .
> .
>>Maybe you should also see "The Net and the Netizens" based on
>>research done on the Net demonstrating that many folks have
>>had their life significantly enriched by the contributions
>>that have come from being on Usenet or other parts of the Net.
>I'm not sure at this point whom you're addressing,
>but I do salute your work, as I have done here be-
That's appreciated :-)
>fore. The question as I understood it, though, is
>a bit more subtle; it's not whether Usenet enriches
>lives, but whether it's a net positive, or, perhaps
>even better, whether we can manage systems so as to
>make it a net positive.
Interesting - I agree that all we can do to make the online
world and experience more valuable is worthy of effort.
However, it seems important to determine where we are
starting our efforts from.
I guess my starting point is there is something very
important going on online and that though there are
also problems or less important aspects to what happens,
the fact is that there is
more signal available online than in any
other media.
> .
Do you agree?
> .
> .
(...)
> .
> .
>>And isn't the wonder of Usenet that it doesn't really have
>>leading theoreticians? But rather that everyone can be
>>and is its theoretician. Therefore it would seem more
>Hey, you should know that's why I'm here.
That's good to hear :-)
>>fruitful to pursue the theme of what are the theoreticians
>>on Usenet saying about the importance and potential that
>>they see of Usenet.
> .
> .
> .
>>I've wanted to begin posting some of the interesting posts
>>that I have found from the early days of Usenet as a
>>sort of "posts from the past" and will try to do so in the
>>next month or two.
>Neat!
Good to know that there is interest :-)
>--
>
>Cameron Laird http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
>cla...@NeoSoft.com +1 713 623 8000 #227
> +1 713 996 8546 FAX
>
Ronda
au...@cleveland.freenet.edu
--
Ronda Hauben "The Netizens and the Wonderful World of the Net"
ro...@umcc.umich.edu Anthology of Articles
free via ftp or on the History of Unix, the Arpanet, and Usenet
gopher or www and on the Impact of the Net