RE: MacroOrganism

Thomas Lapp (ethics%mvac23.uucp@udel.edu)
Sun, 6 Dec 92 17:18:31 EST

One of the founders, Eeyore's Evil Twin <chuq@medraut.apple.com>, writes:
> >It's incredible to me that most or all of the information about
> >the pioneers of the "new electronic frontier" (if I may be so
> >sensationalistic) will be anecdotes which are gradually forgotten
> >until just a few are recorded long after the fact.
>
> There's a lot from that time period that I'm not particularly proud of, and
> I'd personally like to see it disappear into the mists of time. USENET,
> also, is an organization without a history. it exists in a continuum, but
> there is rather little connection between usenet then and usenet now. Some
> software, a few people who travel through the net like timelords, but if you
> try to tell folks that there was a time before moderated groups, or even
> when all of the groups were in a single hierarchy, or even that alt is a
> relative newcomer to the world, they'd look at you funny.

Obviously, I don't have the same viewpoint as you, but I think that
just the fact that the early Usenet history has some not-so-much-fun
periods doesn't make it any less a history.

If you look at the history of radio, you see some pretty rotten tricks
played out between some of the fathers of the field. I'm sure that they
would look back and say that they would rather forget some of it, but
those vary bits help to explain a lot about why things are the way they
are today (ie. FM stereo, and FM audio for TV).

I'm not asking you to regurgitate all those painful memories. Perhaps
record them somewhere with one of those do-not-open-until-I'm-dead kind
of attachments, but at least allow the story to be told at some point.
- tom
+++++++++++
Thomas Lapp, | internet: ethics%mvac23@udel.edu
Senior Seminar resource | seminar: @udel.edu:mvac23!ethics
in Newark, DE, USA |

This page last updated on: Jul 1 09:16