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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/17/84 chuqui version 1.7 9/23/84; site nsc.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!nsc!chuqui
From: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuqui & MacDuff)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Why the net didn't die, or perhaps why it did
Message-ID: <2257@nsc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 23-Jan-85 01:01:24 EST
Article-I.D.: nsc.2257
Posted: Wed Jan 23 01:01:24 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 24-Jan-85 06:41:55 EST
References: <216@looking.UUCP>
Reply-To: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuqui & MacDuff)
Organization: Somewhere in Dallas
Lines: 39
Summary: 


 
>You will all recall various discussions over the past few years about
>the soon-to-come death of the net under its own weight.
>
>So the question now becomes, why didn't this happen?
>
>The answer is that the net has reached a kind of equilibrium.
>As net traffic has gotten heavier and noisier, more and more people
>are leaving it, or reading far less.  So now the more people the net
>attracts, the more people it scares away.  So in a sense, perhaps for
>many the net has already died, as predicted.
>
>I joined the net almost 4 years ago, and then everybody read everything.
>Now I only read a small subset of groups, and I say "n" to about 80% of
>the articles in groups I do read.  I can't afford to spend time on articles
>that include the text of other articles, or don't have descriptive subjects.
>Sometimes if I enter a group and I see too any articles waiting, I just
>skip the whole group.  The more I have to read the less I want to read it.
>
>I am not alone.
>-- 
>Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473

I should also point out fro the above that a lot of the new users like
Frank Adrian are driving out a lot of the old users like Brad Templeton. We
aren't getting the same kind of users we used to have, and I think the
overall quality of the postings in general has gone way down. It just isn't
bodies we need to count, it is the intelligence within them, and I am not
terribly sure that we've done much more that spread the total net IQ over a
much wider number of bodies...

chuq
-- 
From the ministry of silly talks:               Chuq Von Rospach
{allegra,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA

National Semiconductor does not require useless disclaimers on posted
material that is obviously not posted by company spokesmen...