...

[Christos Nouskas]

CR> Sas perase pote apo to myalo h aporia poy na einai arage shmera oi
CR> an8rwpoi poy dhmioyrghsan to FidoNET kai thn texnologia toy?

Amesws molis eida to mhnyma sou, 8ymh8hka ena palio posting sthn
alt.folklore.computers, pou milouse me nostalgia gia thn early epoxh tou Usenet
kai enan apo tous an8rwpous pou ksexwrizan tote. Me eixe sygkinhsei o tropos
grafhs tou, idiws h teleytaia paragrafos, kai to krathsa. Para8etw:

,,,
(o o) File: Rosen
---*reiss*------*schnippel*------oOO--(_)--OOo-------*knabber*-----*fetz*---

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Thomas M Richardson
Subj: Rich Rosen
Sent: 25 Nov 95 02:31:54
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: tric...@ionet.net (Thomas M Richardson)

* Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology,alt.usenet.kooks,cabal.config,
alt.journalism.gonzo,alt.culture.usenet,news.groups,alt.cyberpunk,
alt.culture.internet,alt.cyberspace,alt.folklore.computers,alt.folklore.urban,
alt.flame,alt.slack,alt.society.neutopia

[ I expanded the Newsgroups field so that I can ask a wider
audience for copies of any articles posted by Rosen. If you
have something of his archived, PLEASE mail it to me. Thanks.

I trimmed the followups a bit. ]

I beabled:
>> [ Yadda, yadda, yadda...Rich Rosen, Rich Rosen, Rich Rosen...

Lee S. Bumgarner (bumg...@falcon.jmu.edu) asked:
> Who is this?

From my first bit of Usenet newbie-hood (fall of 1984) there were two
d00ds who really stood out: Rich Rosen and Jeff (Moriarty) Myers. Rosen
was particularly noteworthy, because he posted pages of pages of coherent
material on just about every group I read. He was so prolific that someone
suggested he was an AI program written by Bell Labs (he posted from a Bell
Labs account) to increase the amount of Usenet traffic to enhance AT&T's long
distance revenues. (This was back when most of Usenet traffic was carried
by regular telephone lines. Sheesh. I would have liked to have seen
Digital's phone bill just for decvax's forwarding of Usenet posts and mail.)

I remember Rosen particularly from net.flame and net.politics. This was
back when you could read the entire Usenet feed in a single afternoon. That
doesn't explain how Rosen managed to post on every subject, though. I
think he must have been a speed typist or he must have had some kind of
augmented metabolism or something.

He also managed to stay coherent and to largely avoid repeating himself.
Maybe there really was no Rich Rosen. Maybe Dennis Ritchey was just playing
a weird joke on everybody.

Who knows.

All I do know is that I remember Rosen. And a decade ago he stomped on the
'net. I have no idea whatever happened to him and I was so much in awe of
him that I never followed up one of his articles or sent him e-mail.
Weird, huh?

While I don't *know* what happened to him, I have heard rumors of his demise.
A failed data swap in a cigarette boat off the coast of South Florida.
Rumblings in the hacker community about him leading a revolution
(Lovolution?) in Central America. Whenever I hear that sort of thing, I
feel an obligation to pass it on. To perpetuate the myth.

Rosen was a prototype for the dawning digital age -- a high-powered mutant of
some kind who was never considered for mass production. He was too linear
for the net and too weird for Real Life. He was a manic electric buffalo
and the net is a duller place without him.

Tom Richardson

---*reiss*------*schnippel*--------------------------*knabber*-----*fetz*---

ΝΝΝΝ» Φ ΙΝΝΝΝ
ΝΝΞΝΞΝΞΝΝ
ΝΝΝΝΌ ½ ΘΝΝΝΝ http://www.med.auth.gr/~nouskas