V.S.Uren@open.ac.uk wrote:
>
> Yes indeed! The model propsed leads to models of doing business which
> in
> Britain get called "jobs for the boys" and "old school tie" its very
> damaging to innovation. The good/bad thing about only talking to
> people who
> are "in the club" is that you only get to hear what you like to hear -
> this
> is not good for any society.
>
The problem is not with clubs, per se, but rather with the
openness of the club. Having a "club" is no different from
having an email list. To get on it, people subscribe. It
need be no more "exclusive" than that.
However, the total lack of civility that is rampant in some
chat rooms, and the overwhelming volume of spam that deluges
my inbox on a daily basis (a volume which is beginning to
exceed a noise to signal ratio of 10:1), I think it makes
sense to consider ways to rein in the rampant nuttiness
which is currently on the loose.
I recall hearing one internet old-timer speak of the
"endless fall" of 1994, or some such. The story goes like
this:
Every fall, new students would arrive on campus, and
they would begin making newbie mistakes in the chat
rooms. They would be duly chastised &/or educated by
the old timers, and by the time winter rolled around,
pretty much everyone had gotten with the program, and
investigative dialog (rather than confrontational)
was pretty much the norm, until the following fall.
Then came the explosion of the web. (1994?) The mass of
newcomers completely overwhelmed the existing population,
and the "socialization process" never quite caught up
with the influx.
In those days, mechanisms for spamming were much less
sophisticated, so anyone who misused the system could
be mail-bombed into submission. But these days, such
retalitory practices are pretty near impossible. So
the perpetrators get off mostly scot-free.
The invitation mechanism provides a vehicle for improving
both scenarios. Personally, if I had at my disposal an
email client which virtually eliminated any chance of
spam, I suspect I would be quick to use it.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Apr 11 2001 - 15:18:41 PDT