Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site watdaisy.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!watdaisy!gjerawlins From: gjerawlins@watdaisy.UUCP (Gregory J.E. Rawlins) Newsgroups: net.singles,net.social,net.philosophy Subject: Re: netfriends Serious or Fluff!? Message-ID: <6976@watdaisy.UUCP> Date: Sun, 17-Feb-85 21:15:35 EST Article-I.D.: watdaisy.6976 Posted: Sun Feb 17 21:15:35 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 18-Feb-85 06:35:19 EST References: <2763@dartvax.UUCP> Reply-To: gjerawlins@watdaisy.UUCP (Gregory J.E. Rawlins) Distribution: net Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario Lines: 70 Xref: watmath net.singles:5890 net.social:468 net.philosophy:1465 Summary: [In response to an article (basically) asking for opinions on whether the net is important on a personal level - for those who don't want to read long articles the answer is (basically) yes but with a caveat - how's that for an informative summary! :-) ] [This might be titled "On the Net Tonight" after the Phil Collins song from "Face Value"] Thank you for your very open and personal statement Mark, it's much appreciated. I would like to second the notion that the net is something much bigger than the sum of it's sites. To me the net is like an overmind (not in a fascist sense - since it can be tuned out very easily - just unsubscribe!). It's interesting to see it slowly (and sometimes painfully) evolving into something completely new. Speculations from netland on where the net is going and what it's evolving into (assuming it is evolving) are welcome. To me interacting with the net is rather like if being in contact with a huge number of the sharpest and most dogmatic (pig-headed? self-opinionated?) people alive and, yes, it is good to know that no matter what strictures there are on your time there is someone (a whole bunch of someones actually) to talk to. I think that we can only handle such a large number of "contactees" because the contact is through a medium that Turing thought was good enough to remove any vestiges of the humanity of the contactee and leave only the intelligence (or lack thereof ;-). If that is the case then i submit that that is also what is *wrong* with the net. Before i get roasted let me say that i'm not convinced that it's a *bad* thing, but the fact is that for several hundred thousand years human beings have been evolving societies and modes of behaviour to deal with a reasonable small number of contactees in their lives (i vaguely credit Toffler's first book for introducing this idea to me - i suspect it wasn't new even then). The point is that contact through the net is *antiseptic* none of the cues we've evolved over the centuries can aid us here (for example this explains the code that we've been forced to adopt to tell when we're joking :-). So while the net is good as a source of information; as a sounding board for new ideas; as a representative sampling of the population (well...); as a place (way) to meet others of similar occupation (if not similar views on the world ;-); as a news source (wow!); etc., like it or not it probably will not decrease the need for actual physical contact (take that as you will! :-) since that is what we've predisposed to need. (Hoo boy am i gonna get it for this...). I'd like to mention a related idea here and that is that whenever a question is submitted to the net the net acts like a brain, where the brain is made up of many loosely connected independent processors each with their own view of the world. It is interesting that with such disparate inputs we (the net) can reach any consensus at all (well...this depends on the newsgroup, i'm mainly thinking of the more technical ones like net.lang.c etc., discussions on newsgroups like this one tend to sort of peter out with nothing really established except a better understanding of the problem and a heightened appreciation of the old adage about variety being the spice of life). Well i think that's all from me for now, i'm off for some Real World Processing (or a reasonable facsimilie thereof anyway), it's time for someone else to carry the ball; fortunately, on the net, there is no dearth of such. Cheers. Greg. -- Gregory Rawlins CS Dept.,U.Waterloo,Waterloo,Ont.N2L3G1 (519)884-3852 gjerawlins%watdaisy@waterloo.csnet CSNET gjerawlins%watdaisy%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa ARPA {allegra|clyde|linus|inhp4|decvax}!watmath!watdaisy!gjerawlins UUCP