On 2/10/01 8:04 PM, "J C Lawrence" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Yeah. To some degree it still is -- every generation thinks life
>> is great, and every previous generation thinks the new one screwed
>> things up and the good old days were better.
>
> Yep, there are also always reactive forces and the new motions they
> create.
Yup. A lot of my energy right now is aimed at trying to find ways to promote
and encourage what I'll call the "club scene" environment of the internet.
Now that the internet has mainstreamed in a huge way, between AOL, Yahoo and
the other big muthers of the net, I think it's really important that we
don't forget that it's still possible for there to be a strong, viable
"alternative net" -- in fact it's a lot easier online than, say, the
alternative music scene in San Francisco, where rents are driving a lot of
venues out.
I don't want us to forget that we CAN be small, personal and successful --
that while Yahoo is successful (to date) and Amazon is successful (if not
yet profitable) -- that isn't necessarily the only definition of success.
And frankly, that's where most of the innovation for future generations of
the net will come from. It's the core of the open source movement, and you
see things like weblogs, like jabber, like python, like /. And its clones.
Some of which will turn into Big Things, some won't. But these are the
incubators of the future -- and the place where those of us who don't want
corporatized pablum can go to let our hair down and get personal.
Since I've done my part to make the net big and successful, I now feel
somewhat obligated to help make sure the small parts don't get run over and
dismembered along the way. Fortunately, it gets ever easier and cheaper to
build these little outposts -- we just need to make sure people remember
they can, and they do...
> Much of the signal that was once on Usenet has moved to
> mailing lists and (sadly) weblogs
And places like hockeyfanz, and etc -- I was once one of the core Usenet
hacks, way back when. Today -- I've moved all of my stuff off, and I view
Usenet as nothing more than a place that attracts all of the people I really
don't want infesting my stuff. It's the tar baby that makes the briar patch
safer for the intelligent people... (and yes, I know there are outposts of
sanity on usenet. But these days, they ARE outposts, no more than that)
> One side effect of population growth, and in particular, increase in
> number of media-types, is that even rather tiny viewpoints
Anyone who's been involved in SF fandom for a period of time knows about the
invasion of the media types. It's a familiar theme...
But without completely repeating my last diatribe on how generations see
things differently, ti's a case of new groups building upon the foundations
laid by others -- but not being those others, so the building changes style
as floors are added. Think of it in terms of each new owner remodelling the
house to fit their current style. The one thing I think we need to make sure
each generation understands (or some key element of it, at least), is that
they need to leave a foundation that whoever comes next can use, too, so
things keep building and evolving. The guys who wrote B news, and those of
us who Caballed Usenet long ago, if they were plopped into today's net after
hibernating a few years, would be stunned. But that's not necessarily a bad
thing...
> There are booingly successful forums out there for
> niches that would have been entirely unsupportable 5 years ago --
> there simply weren't enough people online, and as a result there
> were few visibility mechanisms.
IMHO, this visibility issue is still a problem, despite what we have today.
(but I won't go that direction right now...)
> There are reasons that alt.sex.binaries.pictures.erotica and Co
> account for a couple orders of magnitude more traffic than the rest
> of Usenet put together.
Because it's a moderately anonymous way to get stuff that's socially
marginal. But then, porn has under most circumstances led technological
revolutions (it put the VCR on the map; the DVD player is one of the first
significant changes that porn didn't lead in, but I think that's because
it's evolutionary from the VCR, not revolutionary. And it was well
marketed...)
Of course, on all my news systems, the binaries never even get in the front
door, so we don't have those problems or issues, and our news volume is
quite manageable...
> Populations tend to group internally. More interestingly (I've
> found this a challenge for my own lists), high signal venues don't
> tend to attract memberships who then promote and advertise those
> forums.
I think that's true. I'd never considered it quite that way. It makes an
interesting issue on marketing of lists and communities. Hmm.
> They're far more interested in purposive/constructive
> conversation than in finding additional audience. So you end up
> with sloid inward-facing packs of people around the high signal
> venues, and little leaking out to attract new potential members.
Yup. And you run into the issue of people not wanting to screw up their
power bases. Those who are in that list "royalty" have no over-reaching
reason to want fresh blood to arrive, since they may come and take over part
of the list, or change the dynamics of the social group.
Heck, I resigned an organization this year that I've been a member (and
active volunteer to) for pretty damn much forever. The reasons were
numerous, but one of the defining moments when I realized I had to get out
was when I realized the organization was seriously broken -- and there were
too many people who wanted to KEEP it broken, because they were controlling
their little turfs and pieces, and maintaining that was more important than
making the organization useful and there was no way to fix things without
shooting enough bodies that I realized it couldn't be done without killing
the organization. So instead of trying, I got out, so I wouldn't be tempted
to try anyway).
I see that same kind of attitude on some lists: who cares if everyone's
fighting, since I'm on top and it flows down! to a degree, that's the domain
of the troll....
> I get more list members from one university professor who uses my
> main list and its posts in his courses than I do from any visibility
> steps I've ever taken.
And I think that's the key to succeeding in these smaller net-venues. Find
the right places for word-of-mouth to work. And it's not always easy to know
what they are ahead of time...
--
Chuq Von Rospach, Internet Gnome <http://www.chuqui.com>
[<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> = <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> = <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>]
Yes, yes, I've finally finished my home page. Lucky you.
You know, I Remember When I Used To Speak In Capitals, Too. It's addictive.
It also encourages people to poke sticks at you. Justifiably. (chuq, 1992)
