Ahem. Hello? Anyone here? I'm kind of curious about what happened to the volume of mail in groups like Brin-L and the Culture list. I have an idea that at first, several years ago now, the emergence of blogging sucked a lot of people away from list mail. And now social networking sites have all but killed them. I could be wrong, I only belong to the two lists. There may be lists that are thriving, but I'm guessing that most of them have seen a serious decline in traffic.
Its a shame really because I think that lists are a much better forum for the exchange of ideas than either personal blogs or Facebook type forums. Blogs seem far to solipsistic to me; Here's what I think, you can comment if you'd like but I can delete your comments or block you if I don't like what you say and what are you doing here anyway if you don't agree with me. I know that that's a generalization, but I think that in general, blogs discourage discussion and debate. Facebook is the only social network I frequent and while I think it's great and has its place, it's a terrible forum for any kind of serious political debate. For one thing, many of the people you know intimately are probably there, and if they are people you wouldn't want to debate at the dinner table (because you don't want to promote discord) then you probably don't want to get into it with them on Facebook either. And really, that's not what Facebook is for anyway, its more of a hey look at these pictures of my kids or hey isn't this a funny video or (for some) hey I just trimmed my toenails kind of place. Not that that has stopped me from expressing my opinion there now and then. 8^) In any case, poor old Brin-l seems to be as dead as a door nail, and I think that that's a shame. Is anyone out there? Doug _______________________________________________ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
