Hi everyone. Well, I am only technically subscribed tothe Brin-ist, but I don't read it. Well, almost never. So I'm not sure whether this is my place, but that rarely stops me, so here I go poking my nose in where it doesn't belong.
Here I am in a PC-Bang (roughly the equivalent of an internet cafe) in a small city in South Korea, where I live now. I'm taking some time in the middle of a geek-fest with a bunch of friends playing Rogue Spear on a LAN, and I decide to peek at what's going on at Brin-L. What I see is, well... Your list -- it's not mine, I've not been on this list for a year except nominally -- is full of absolutely crazy threads, mainly about the list itself. About what accusations and terminology for accusation is appropriate and what isn't. Frankly, it's not just disappointing. It's embarrassing. I was wondering if perhaps maybe the rumors I had heard were exaggerations, or maybe just the way people on other mailing lists talk about dreaded, feared lists. Made me think of a long-ago discussion had here about the Robert Jordan newsgroup and their verbal excesses. (Or, perhaps, excessions is a more appropriate word?) I had hoped that maybe this would be a nice place to revisit, somewhere I thought would click with the fond memories I have of old discussions. But it doesn't. I would have thought that people might have gotten past these kinds of issues, the kind of infighting that emerged around the time I left this list, but it doesn't seem to have happened. I think there are a couple of things that it would be worth reminding you of. Firstly, these arguments are being recorded in a public archive available to anybody who has an interest in them. All one has to do is subscribe to the Brin-L and they can read the posting history, no problem. (In theory, anyway.) People have reported to me their observations of the meltdown that happened a couple of summers back, whom I never knew were subscribed to the list. People actually discuss the meltdown on other mailing lists (I've seen such discussions). People make jokes about this ploace being a sniper's nest of inappropriate attacks and irrational posting. I've seen this myself on at least one other mailing list, and I am certain it happens on others too! And believe me, the bickering going on now looks more than silly -- it looks stupid and childish and in fact depressing. It looks like the kind of list that someone might join for a day and quit soon after, like many of us have seen in the past. The landscape here looks very different from the bright place where intelligent people debatedand joked about, dammit!) issues and questions and ideas -- it looks like a fractious, pointless, boring place to be. Have I read the full list history? Nope. I haven't caught up on what I've missed in the eleven months I've been away. But seeing the bulk of the posts automatically displayed when I accessed the archive, I don't see much point in doing so. But I thought it might be useful to be reminded than many many people see, and can see, what kinds of discussions you are having. There is a time and place for everything, you know? But right now, I wouldn't be advertising my past membership in this group, that's certain. People might misinterpret what they see here as what the Brin-L used to be... for it is NOT what it once was, if this is what I see on accessing the list on a random given day. It's petulant and accusatory and factionalist and quite frankly, boring. Arguments like that aren't worth actually having, in my opinion, and if they seem to be, then you need time in a bigger pond or something. Remember the intelligence on this list? It used to astound me. Now it's the childishness and whine and intolerance and rudeness that astounds me. I may not go in for the repeated gospel of Brin, that "We are members of a civilization," for "we" and "civilization" are such weighted and freighted words one cannot use them with blithe naivete anymore -- nor can one ignore the many implications carried in that statement. Nor do I think any mantra can cure the world's ills, for even seemingly enlightened groups of people can act in mortifying ways. But I do think that there is at least the capacity to self-assess one's public statements and conduct. And a mailing list is, like it or not, a public space. Would you have these fights in a shopping mall? Including the pedantic lists, the overblown rhetoric, the haggling over definitions which seemingly aims not at increased understanding but at winning a point in the great argument of whatever-it-is-we-are-arguing-about? If not, why do it here? Maybe there is a Brin-L still, but the Brin-L I remember is dead and gone. Maybe there are better things to do than fight -- either to make a new list, whether by the same name or not, or maybe something else altogether. Remember in Earth, when characters put aside their computers and go out and do stuff? Maybe Brin was onto something there. Maybe arguing about things is a way of not doing anything. I dunno. But I think I'd consider being a part of those fights a waste of the precious time in my life. *shrug* Maybe that's harsh, but is this stuff worth wasting what little precious time you are lucky enough to have at your disposal in this life? I doubt it. The old debates? Yes. This stuff? My personal answer is an even more vehement no than it has ever been. All of this the above expresses merely my impressions and opinion. I hope everyone's well, and yes, I really am in South Korea, happy and well and finishing this email on my home computer, hours after I began it. I hope all is well with you guys. Gord Sellar PS personal email is welcome. Don't CC me to replies to this email, though, unless you think I need to hear the response -- assuming there is one. And, yes, I know this contradicts some of my last actions on the list. This does not make me a hypocrite as far as I can see, because it is possible to learn from what one comes to see as mistakes. I don't see my comments onlist during the blowup as being a mistake -- I would criticize the kind of behaviour I was criticizing then in almost any circusmstance that didn't involve automatic weapons. The mistakes I'm talking about involve thinking that some things are more important than they really are, forgetting the context for any public discussion, and imagining that arguments made on mailing lists serve any purpose other than a way to pass the time among internet users who find entertainment in arguing -- sometimes for the sake of arguing itself or hearing the sound of their own keystrokes, especially among those of similar thinking. Things can be more than that, but it's not likely to happen when people are arguing about right and wrong and allowable boundaries and who is the police and so on. You probably can do better than that, I'd like to think... _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
