Path: utzoo!utstat!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!decwrl!uunet!attcan!lsuc!becker!bdb
From: bdb@becker.UUCP (Bruce Becker)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Who pays the bill?
Message-ID: <29103@becker.UUCP>
Date: 4 Aug 90 02:05:17 GMT
References: <1990Aug1.230858.3264@iwarp.intel.com> <EMV.90Aug1202214@urania.math.lsa.umic <1990Aug02.203405.40@looking.on.ca>
Organization: G. T. S., Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Lines: 96

In article <1990Aug02.203405.40@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes:
|In article <1990Aug2.162214.24074@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
|>Well, it's a simple choice:  you can enforce your ideas of purity and
|>cleanliness, at the price of shafting a lot of users who have primitive
|>software and can't do anything about it, or you can leave things the
|>way they are.  I'm not sure what the change is supposed to buy us.
|
|Well, Path is not a great example.  But I'm for this general principle.
|I'm all for shafting a lot of users who have primitive software.
|
|The net is too big as it is, I would rather have a better, smaller net
|by cutting dead wood.  I would guess that 99% of users can do something
|about it if they really want to.  If commenting to the people who can
|update only brings a 'it's only usenet, who cares?' response, then these
|sites are pretty non-serious participants, and we can live without them.

	Brad, I mostly pass by your sayings, and every
	once in a while actually agree, but you are really
	off base this time.

	This is sheer elitist pap, and misinformed to boot,
	sort of like "let them eat cake". There are a lot
	of very small sites out there with fairly limited
	news software, who are hacking away trying to get
	full news functionality on small systems. 

	I, among others, go to a lot of trouble to try to
	support these folks because I feel that the net is
	a new and powerful idea in personal communication,
	a new medium as it were, so when someone wants to
	get started to use it I try to help.

	The fact of the usenet's size is relevant only
	inasmuch as it will cause change to occur in order
	to accommodate the continued growth which is
	occurring. At some point when there are perhaps
	3-5 times the number of articles per day than
	now, serious mutation is likely to start happening
	to the net, or so it looks from here.

	Attempting to keep this from happening by inventing
	some kind of "we were here first so here's the rules
	to join" gumbo probably isn't going to work because
	the size of the net may well cause it to be uncontrollable
	by then.

	A more important question is more like "is the
	growth of the net going to make it be awful to
	me?", which I think you are trying to say "yes"
	to. So the logical outcome of this is that the
	net may fragment into the "just us" club which
	tries to preserve and enhance the current status
	quo (whatever that is), and the newbies who will
	massively overrun everything and make a mess by
	sheer weight of numbers.

	I'm deliberately overstating things here in order
	to throw a sharp light onto things (as I see them
	at least) - there are a lot of people who care
	about the net as a thing in itself, and it seems
	that this attitude is a mostly unspoken tenet of
	communication for many here. The problem arises
	due to the consequences of this laudable feeling,
	since the net has become solid and reliable as
	a means of communication - so much so that it can
	be more or less taken for granted by those who
	wish to do so.

	Therefore it is possible for new participants to
	see the net as a communication service first and
	foremost, without having themselves to go back
	to first principles in order to use it. This is
	true regardless of the lack of quality of software
	used to participate for the most part.

	The important work therefore isn't in the software -
	the real gamut new users ought to run is the one
	which inducts them into a community such that they
	are responsible to it and aware of its needs and
	means of maintenance. This community is a new form
	of city perhaps, or something else that hasn't
	got any exact precedent in human affairs.

	Nevertheless something will happen, will it or no,
	so some shared vision is required here, something
	that the usenet seems quite good at, overall.
	Trying to exercise some kind of control, on the
	other hand, is a solution that seems inappropriate
	to our needs...


-- 
  ,u,	 Bruce Becker	Toronto, Ontario
a /i/	 Internet: bdb@becker.UUCP, bruce@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu
 `\o\-e	 UUCP: ...!uunet!mnetor!becker!bdb
 _< /_	 "I still have my phil-os-o-phy" - Meredith Monk