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From: dm@BFLY-VAX.BBN.COM
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Sammie's data
Message-ID: <8710220524.AA12093@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: Thu, 22-Oct-87 01:24:19 EDT
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Posted: Thu Oct 22 01:24:19 1987
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I like to think that computer bulletin boards and electronic mail will
be the ultimate Samizdat.  With computer bulletin boards and
electronic mail you can self-publish on a reasonably wide scale, if
you're willing to pay the price -- they can always throw you in jail.
But I think people like Yuri Orlov, Anatoly Scharansky, Andrei
Sakharov, etc. are ample evidence that people will be willing to pay
the price.  

Why hasn't it happened yet?  I claim that it is beginning to happen
now.  National Public Radio had a report recently on ``Minitel'',
which is a bboard set up by the French Telco, and which also has
outlets in the US (one in NYC).

From the description of the way people interacted on the Minitel
system, it sounds like keyboard citizens' band to me.  Or USENET news,
or what happens on the bboard at work.

I think computer networks and bulletin boards are going to REALLY get
going with all the nation's colleges being wired, and every college
student having a PC wired into the college network.  Let's face it:
almost the only people who know about computer networks today are us
computer weenies.  With the wiring of colleges, the word will get
spread outside our narrow confines to the population as a whole.