PHIL: net ---> entropy (x mainstream fools)

absu (CBLANC@POMONA.CLAREMONT.EDU)
Sun, 11 Sep 1994 14:39:34 -0700 (PDT)


>Finally, let me go on record dispelling an old myth; that the Internet was
>once a free and happy place where hackers roamed. It's false nostalgia
>that makes me shudder. The Internet was formed as a defensive system that
>would survive a US *first-strike* nuclear war, and back when I first got
>on (1988), it still had a very heavy MIL tilt. Internet was free and
>happy? Sure, if you worked for the Military-Industrial complex, or at a
>big university, two times of notoriously poorly-grounded organizations.
>It wasn't crowded, true, but it wasn't rich either.

let me go on record contesting this: i think you're right that there is
a myth going around that the net was once a paradise of purity (but the truth
is that usenet has always been 50% BS) but i think you're off in the way you
characterize it.
some time ago the net was for those who sought access, or those on .MIL
or .EDU sites. now, it's been flooded by the same fools who intrude the rest
of our lives with their physical presence -- the masses. i liked it better
when access was harder to find, as i found less blatant stupidity, but more
importantly, less blatant unthinking, mass-churning go-head-spawn-and-die
mentality operation.
mosaic hasn't helped this, and VRML shouldn't further it. most of the
chitchat i've seen on this list has been people trying to find some way to
justify using inventor for a pretty-pictures-in-3D browser, which i think is a
shame, as VRML should be a more structured entity than that, and the eventual
language (which i think will be created, perhaps as a subset, superset, or
modification of an existing language) isn't as big an issue as the creation of
an actual web, a network within a network.

- sven

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