Are these anecdotes being collected anywhere? Sounds to me like a great
subject for a book.
I've been perusing the Whole Earth Review, Bruce Sterling's book, etc., for
a term paper on the new communications technologies (and the human elements
thereof). What I've found has mostly been the more sensational stories of
hackers (Acid Phreak, et al). What would be nice would be to add some of
the other stories, of the "builders" (to use a fairly grandiose term) of
the net.
(You know that something's become established when you get people writing
academic papers about it!)
Howard Rheingold has written a book about the people of the "electronic
frontier," but it's a few years out of date. And Bruce Sterling's book is
current, but covers mostly the hackers, not Usenet people (although the two
groups do overlap). And while new technologies are pretty nifty and
wonderful, they can also be terribly alienating -- that is, until you
discover the human side of the new technologies. (After all, Minitel in
France didn't get really used until people found that they could talk to
each other as well as get information from the central computer.)
___________________________________________
Gladys We * (604) 291-5077 * Writing & Publishing Program * Simon Fraser
University
This page last updated on: Jul 1 09:16