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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc
Subject: Re: More on "The Network Nation"
Message-ID: <766@hplabsc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 17-Oct-86 11:51:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.766
Posted: Fri Oct 17 11:51:02 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 18-Oct-86 07:11:53 EDT
Reply-To: hplabs!pyramid!hoptoad!gnu@hplabs.HP.COM
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
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Approved: taylor@hplabs
Reference: <728@hplabsc.UUCP>

This article is from hoptoad!gnu@hplabs.HP.COM (John Gilmore)
 and was received on  Fri Oct 17 04:15:47 1986
 

Well, I've never met Murray Turoff or taken a course from him or used
his system, but I've watched a friend use it.  It struck me as about as
friendly as the average BBS system, e.g. pitiful.  I have heard several
people rave about how good EIES is and my impression is that they either
don't know much about electronic networking, or don't care how friendly
it is as long as there are interesting people on the other end.

I think that aside from the people who use it, the chief advantage of
EIES over Usenet, compuserve, bix, fido, or a BBS system is that you
can buy a book that talks all about it.  The disadvantage is that it is
very pricey, hard to use, and hasn't kept up with modern email/enews
abilities, like the ability to gateway to and from other networks.

[Perhaps we can talk about the significance of this differing expectation
 and the impact that it has on the rapid development of computer-based
 conferencing systems and "on-line communities"??  Certainly this leads one
 to believe that the Ivory Tower syndrome is hitting again, where what the
 researchers do in the University environment has no parallel to the 'real'
 world.  All comments are welcome...				-- Dave]