Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP 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!mhuxt!houxm!ihnp4!nsc!chuqui From: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) Newsgroups: net.news.group Subject: Re: Doomsday cometh? Are you sure? Message-ID: <3244@nsc.UUCP> Date: Wed, 11-Sep-85 00:42:28 EDT Article-I.D.: nsc.3244 Posted: Wed Sep 11 00:42:28 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 12-Sep-85 08:39:56 EDT References: <781@vortex.UUCP> <85@l5.uucp> Reply-To: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) Organization: Uncle Chuqui's Lemming Farm Lines: 41 Summary: In article <85@l5.uucp> gnu@l5.uucp (John Gilmore) writes: >In article <781@vortex.UUCP>, lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) writes: >> It occurs to me that we're trying to hold back an ocean with >> a sponge. Gang, there ain't NO WAY we can make this work. >I've seen this happen for four years running now...every time the >colleges start up and a lot of junk comes in until people learn the >ropes, we start hearing bells tolling for the Usenet. >The volume is up, and the tools are evolving to deal with it. In the >"good old days" when there were 40 sites, there was no compression. >There was no "rn". There wasn't even a "vnews"! It may well be the John has a point. A lot of the 'old-timers' may be suffering from "Golden Age" syndrome, and bemoaning the lost times of the good old days. We HAVE gotten this far, mind you, and when I look at where we were a couple of years ago, I'm amazed. Of course, that was then, and this is now, and doomsday really IS around the corner this time... Really... Trust me. Well, trust me anyway... One thing that DOES worry me is that the problems that I see are no longer the technological ones, they are the humanistic ones. Usenet has always been able to come up with the better widget when needed (rn, compression) and network technology will always keep ahead of technological overload. What we need to worry about is overloading the human circuits. I think this will require a shift in our emphasis from newer widgets to better widgets. Rn is a great first step in this direction, but it may just be time to evolve away from the concept of the newsgroup completely into something else. I'm playing with the idea, but I don't have any firm concepts yet. I wouldn't be at all suprised to see the net survive. I WOULD be quite suprised to see USENET survive, because it simply wasn't built for this size of a network. We need to find a solution that is, and that solution is somewhere in the user interface -- making it easier for the user to find what they need. -- Chuq Von Rospach nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA {decwrl,hplabs,ihnp4}!nsc!chuqui An uninformed opinion is no opinion at all. If you dont know what you're talking about, please try to do it quietly.