On Mar 28, 2004, at 10:36 PM, Nancy Haitz wrote:
Watch out Nancy - flames may start coming... Every time I have ever said
anything positive about AOL I've been flamed for weeks afterwards :-)
Russ,
I have never used AOL. Don't even know (nor do I want to know) why people hate it. But, like I said, I know several families that stick with it because of the little people around the house.
It's sort of a systemic knee-jerk thing; particularly amongst old net denizens...
To quote a line from Jimmy Buffet: "...history lesson...history lesson"
There used to be a saying 'Well, it must be September on the Net!'
Every September a whole new crop of kids hit colleges and got their first Internet account, whereupon they acted like rude, loud newbies for a month or so, until the thrill wore off.
The Internet was a smaller place back then, and was definitely a small, clubby, even clannish community, with unwritten rules to follow, and certain behavior expected. (Read the FAQ before asking questions, just lurk on a mailing list for a little while to pick up the tone of discourse and customs of the list, be polite, there is a place to go rant drunkenly on the net (alt.drunken.bastards), etc...)
Every September there was a new, unruly bunch of newbies that had to be corralled and broke, in the wild horses sense, before they became good net citizens.
Then GE/CompuServe connected their proprietary service to the Internet (one of the first steps of commercialization of the net...at this point in time, .edu sites vastly outnumbered .com sites) without any preparation of their users for the peculiar, but vigorously enforced community rules of the internet.
Suddenly the largest online service in the world was dumped, unceremoniously, onto the internet. Suddenly it was *always* 'September on the Internet'.
To say there was a culture clash is sort of like saying the Russian Revolution was a little squabble.
Then AOL, already stereotyped for it's catering to the clueless, handholding for the idiot and bane of any geeks existence (since AOL using relatives *invariably* look to them for tech support.) , and by now the largest ISP on the planet, announced that all of it's teeming masses were going to get unfettered access to the internet!
Death of the Internet Predicted!! News At Eleven!!
In actuality, AOL, mindful of GE/Compuserve's experience, actually did a pretty good job of impressing netiquette upon it's users, and the Internet, having swallowed GE/Compuserve by this point, actually tolerated each other pretty well, and the integration.
But AOL getting onto the internet pretty well tipped the Internet from the shreds of the small, close-knit community (Where Kibo could parse *all* of Usenet feed for a mention of his name, anmd respond!) it had been irrevocably into the commercialized monster it is today.
And it's *still* always September on the net...
--
Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group
Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs
-- PCI-PowerMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and...
Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Sonnet & PowerLogix Upgrades - start at $169 | & CDRWs on Sale! |
Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html>
PCI-PowerMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/pci-powermacs.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/pci-powermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/>
Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
