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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 315
Netizens-Digest Monday, July 5 1999 Volume 01 : Number 315
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
[netz] Re: Breaking the News
Re: [netz] Breaking the News
Re: [netz] Re: Breaking the News
[netz] Re: Cyberspace as the New Frontier? (fwd)
Re: [netz] Re: Breaking the News
Re: [netz] Re: Breaking the News
Re: [netz] Re: Breaking the News
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 11:33:26 +0000
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] Re: Breaking the News
>
> So again I guess I was wrong above where I said that you weren't
> openly saying ads were ok. You still aren't, but you are saying
> now that if there isn't a lot of other conversation, ads
> are ok.
>
Three quarters the way through a 15 k post, you admit you have
misinterpreted what I was saying in at least one respect. Thank
you. I hope you will find the time to re-read both my post and then
your own to see how much of your tirade is off the topic of this
thread, not simply by dragging in the Alt.Comp and ICANN but by
your egregious failure to take up the points I raised.
Again, I'm speaking to style, not content. If someone doesnt
understand my line of thinking, I appreciate their asking me if I
mean this or that rather than telling me I'm wrong. In that way we
can have a conversation instead of a confrontation.
Insofar then as John's posts are at least germinal of conversation
(as I say, its too bad no one replies), they are better than no post
at all. If getting to add a 12 line sig is the satisfaction he has to
have in oder to do that, I cant condemn him for that if my
satisfaction comes from 20 or 30 lines of response ;-)
But any length of message that first says its hard to comprehend
and then proceeds to 'respond' as if it was comprehensible (by
leaving out the big words?); that tells me what is the 'essential
issue' and then wanders all over the map; that says a message
saying that another message is off-topic is *on-topic, when any
netiquettist knows that complaints of that sort should go to the list-
owner privately; that can say "If you really want such
experimentation you will find a way to stop X" in all seriousness;
and so on -- that is not satisfying to me, or I dare say, anyone else
who is trying to see why the *potential of the net for global
communication has to be frittered away in the self-centered rant
that prevails in practice.
Having got that off my chest, I will now go back and see what I can
salvage by way of intelligent conversation from the remnants.
kerry
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 11:59:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] Breaking the News
Is there a FAQ for this list that describes what is and is not appropriate?
That said, I don't find John Walker's posts inappropriate, personally. It's
my understanding that ads are acceptable within a community (such as a
mailing list or newsgroup) when the ad is thought by the community to be
useful or relevant.
- --gregbo
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 21:06:03 +0000
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: Re: [netz] Re: Breaking the News
> > My idea is that 'appropriate' is not an absolute value, but a
> >*relative one -- appropriate to what? If there is no context of other
> >mail, then the list is only an empty space in which *anything goes --
> > or (better, relativistically speaking) might as well go for all the
> >difference it makes.
>
> Kerry this is hard for me to comprehend. I'm not talking about any
> abstract post. I'm talking about John's Walker's periodical posting
> to spread his ads and to do so with some kind of excerpts about
> net goings on.
>
(a)> If he cares about net happenings he will do a newsletter about
> net hapenings and he won't have his ads in it.
>
(b)> There all all sorts of business folks trying to figure out how
> to use the Net to serve their businesses and that is not what
> the Netizens list is for.
>
(c)> That is the essential issue here. It's not some abstract
> question of what is "appropriate" and what is not.
...
> >Apart from the undeniable fact that its your list to turn on and off at
> >will, there is the question of how autocratic you choose to be, and
> >this will be a reflection of how autocratically you see the net
>
(d)> No Kerry, this isn't the issue.
>
> It isn't that those opposing the substitution of private interests
> for public interests, that those opposing the spreading of ads
> in the name of some public interest being served are autocratic.
>
(e)> Again what you are doing is subterfuge.
>
> I spoke up. I didn't delete John Walkers ads.
>
> I was acting as a Netizen on the Netizens list and you are claiming
> that that is autocratic.
>
...As a Netizen -- does that mean saying *anything is ipso facto
netizenly? No, it cant mean that, or Johns posts would be okay.
What then distinguishes 'acting as a netizen' from 'spam'?
*That* is the question I raised, the 'issue' which makes any of this
a topic *appropriate to the list. By way of clarification, I offered a
conceptual framework -- that some posts take an absolutist or
autocratic view where others are relativistic -- and, using Johns and
your posts as illustration, suggested that the relativist view is more
netizeny, while 'laying down the law' is at least as absolutist as
the material one is protesting. Now your response provides some
further illustration (which may be clearer by their specificity):
a. Does John care about net happenings? Did you ask him? Is it
appropriate for a netizen (or to Netizens) to 'represent' anothers
position when he's here to speak for himself?
b. All sorts of people are trying to figure out how to keep body and
soul together. I might ask the list for help on a programming
problem; is that 'not what the list is for'? Or I might mention that I
found a solution at a particular URL; is that not what it is for,
either?
c. If 'appropriateness' is not the issue, then can you tell me where
you found a definition which not only is incontrovertible but warrants
no discussion of its incontrovertibility? Or is that definition
essentially that *you know spam when you see it?
d. and e. (see a.) If you are not acting in your capacity as list
owner, then who are you to tell me what is or is not 'the issue'? I
spoke to what I think is *an issue, and of course you may or may
not agree. Is there no netizeny or Netizeny way for agreement or
disagreement to be expressed without making flat statements
about the merits (not to say the appropriateness) of another's
position? FWIW, I think there is, and I think it is an important
enough point to develop at some length.
> >But the net in general and doubtless this list in particular has a
> >good many subscribers who do not know what is appropriate and
> >what is not -- and it is by watching to see what others do can we
> >learn. If you want usto learn to be autocrats and absolutists, by all
>
> I don't see others on the list who don't know what is appropriate.
>
> I have been on lists that I don't choose to post to.
>
> That is a choice and it doesn't say anything about one not knowing
> what is appropriate to do.
>
> So again Kerry you are changing the subject.
>
I disagree, because I see the same confrontational style in other
lists causing many a worthwhile *topical point to be lost in fumes
and acrimony. (I rarely see it here, because as you say, there is
hardly anything here to be seen!)
The nature of lurking is ambiguous, but simple Boolean logic
suggests four possibilities for net-participation:
One knows or one doesnt know how to behave;
One posts or one doesnt post.
If you like, you can make a little square for the combinations:
A knows + posts; B ~knows + posts; C knows and ~posts; D
~knows + ~posts. I chose to call D 'lurking'; if you wish to call C
lurking *also*, its your privilege, but it doesnt make my
interpretation invalid or a change of subject. In other words, *please
do not first make some assumption about what I am doing, and
then rebut that: it's called 'jumping to a conclusion,' and the
implication is that some *reasoning has been jumped over. If you
have a question, then it's *netizeny to ask -- that way we both stay
on topic.
The *interesting question now is: how does one change
categories? C, imo, has a free choice: she can post or not post as
she wishes. D, otoh, has no choice; she can however *watch and
learn from others (A and B), and by watching, come to recognize
that knowing anything (much less knowing how to behave) is not
quite the hard-and-fast category it might appear to be. (For
instance, in some venues, spelling out the obvious to this extent
could be the greatest transgression of all!)
She *may also recognize that she has all the knowledge she
needs (by borrowing from *etiquette learned elsewhere) and thus
converts to A -- which is to be desired, I submit. Or she may
recognize that there is a deeper rule at work: A's posts are 'okay'
*because* they are A's. A has 'authority.' A has 'credentials.' A
knows everything worth knowing, and one should not suspect her
of not knowing how to behave, because that is to question authority
- -- which is bullshit, but has a strong following nevertheless. Now,
can D convert to such an A? Not on this list, you tell me.
In terms of the present example: is it really more important that
John be driven off the list than that others learn to think about how
to tell objectionable material from tolerated material?
To summarize,
> The subject I raised was that it was inappropriate for John
> Walker to post ads to the Netizens list.
The *question I raised is how you are so sure whats appropriate.
> But I as a Netizen have stated that it is not appropriate for John
> Walker to post ads on the Netizens list.
As a Netizen, I suggest it is *not appropriate* to say 'I raised a
subject' and 'any discussion must lead to a foregone conclusion' in
the same (virtual) breath.
> I didn't ask for a discussion of others. I am not stopping a
> discussion of others.
...
> The Netizens list is not a place to make decisions about how
> it is ok to post business ads.
>
I find a post from John Walker in the archives dated 18 October
1998 with essentially the same sig/ ad attached. That's eight and a
half months, in which time (and probably before that) he's been
posting every couple of weeks. Why havent you (or anyone else)
'raised the subject' and/or shut him down before now? Could it be
that everyone recognized that as ads go, it could be a lot worse,
and that in fact, if every spammer did as well as John to provide
text worth reading, there might not be much of a problem?
Is it the 'principle' of the thing, against which 36 weeks or more of
de facto acceptibility does not count, while one 'vote' in your
favour does? Can you say 'absolutism'?
kerry
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 21:06:03 +0000
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] Re: Cyberspace as the New Frontier? (fwd)
Fred Turner wrote,
> To the extent that computer industry consultants like Barlow can
> convince us that the Internet is somehow "nowhere", they can also
> make it harder to see that the Internet relies on real, material
> networks of cables and switches, antennae and satellites, for its
> existence.
...
> Second, consider the notion that like a frontier, the Internet is
> somehow open on equal terms to all users. ...Yet, if we accept this
> view, then we must ignore the fact that large portions of the globe
> are currently off-line and likely to remain so for some time.
But who said the frontier *was actually open on equal terms?
Among the farmers and ranchers and miners, there were both
bigger and smaller adventurers, both well-heeled and shoestring
operations, both those who came to apply well-developed skills and
those who were making a complete 'lifestyle' change -- and they
connived and manipulated and coerced and took advantage of each
other just as they did in the communities they left behind.
Turner's straw man not only makes it hard to see that 'equality' has
always been a pretty nebulous concept -- but obscures a larger
point: that the materialist paradigm of the last couple centuries is
being seriously eroded. While our older, larger, slower forms of
society still suppose, for instance, that by first acquiring money
and goods, *then one becomes a 'success' -- or that cables and
switches are manufactured for their own sake, not relying on the
Internet to make use of them -- hotshot programmers and
engineers now develop hardware products in order to manifest their
'vision' of the Digitization of Practically Everything.
This shift is clearest, of course, in the field of ideas. The old model
insisted that before you could 'apprehend' my idea, it first had to be
'expressed' in physical form; e.g. speech or writing or sculpture.
Cyberspace however makes such expression only a very late stage
in what is (if not yet a direct mind-to-mind contact) at least a
collaborative effort to bring something 'tangible' out of the collective
inchoate thoughts of every participant. Yes, this takes a span of
time, during which a kind of turn-taking exercise goes on, but to
dignify a typical *virtual offering as a 'communication' (much less a
composition in any sense that a 'person of letters' of the 19th c
would accept) overlooks the fact that if any one is persuaded by
email, it is not by the display of any single post but by the
emergent, contextual *dialogue it may be part of. (Thus my intent
here is not to 'prove' that Fred Turner is 'wrong' on the basis of his
one essay, but to collaborate in an *interactive* and continuous
clarification of ideas -- which, I venture to guess, is what he is
hoping for. Thus, too, spam can be readily defined as that which
doesnt expect a response.)
This is a real paradigm shift, a change of focus for which we have
not yet found a reliable terminology, as the effort to apply 'forms of
speech' to electronics (He 'said'; I 'heard') attests. Whether
'cyberspace' is a 'front' of any sort, and whether one image or
another is favoured by "a particular community of computer
manufacturers, software developers, corporate consultants and
academics," the _eversion_ of 'inner space' (where ideas used to
live in isolation) to a global forum of creativity is well underway.
Incredibly enough, this 'exformation revolution' is indeed something
in which everyone has an equal right to participate, and by which
everyone can be a (co-)producer of ideas rather than an (individual)
consumer of ideas cast in dead material form.
The developing tragedy is that so many *fail to participate; they
seem to think of "a series of inter-linked computers and the sorts of
communications they make possible" as nothing but a spectacular
kind of television -- although this, too, is in keeping with a modern
American myth: the one of powerlessness of the 'person in the
street.'
kerry
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 1999 03:41:39 +0200
From: Carsten Laekamp <carsten.laekamp@wanadoo.fr>
Subject: Re: [netz] Re: Breaking the News
On Sun, Jul 04, 1999 at 11:02:55PM +0000, John Walker wrote:
> Karsten, if you were getting the newsletter itself you would certainly
> know it. It's about 40 pages of information about the 'Net....per day.
>
John,
My complaint was about the _real_ ads in your messages, i.e. the
ones for your online courses, which used to appear in front of the
real content of your messages and are now, in terms of placement,
integrated in the message.
(I realise now, after having re-read it, that this was not clear in
my previous message).
This is something which has bothered me for some time, although, at
first, I thought it rather amusing that, of all lists I have ever
been subscribed to, the one called Netizens seemed to be the only
one with was subjected without protest to that practice.
As for the newsletter, I don't, personnally, mind (although I should,
because I do pay for downloading it), mostly because it is situated
at the end of your messages and clearly marked as not being part of
the real content. All I said about that was that I did agree that
it was, technically speaking, spam too. Whether it is the whole
thing or just excerpts that you are posting here doesn't matter,
in that technical sense. What matters is that it is unsolicited,
that you cannot unsubscribe it if you want to and that others than
you pay the bulk part of its diffusion.
Again, I don't really care about the newsletter part. And wouldn't
care about those ads about online courses, if they were placed the
same way as the newsletter. And, of course, I agree to the idea that
if a majority of readers here wants all that, you should go on posting
them. What I do regret, though, is that this seems to be treated as
a closed-door vote rather than a public discussion, which would have
been netizenship in action.
Cheers,
- --
Carsten Läkamp
carsten.laekamp@wanadoo.fr
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 1999 03:53:08 +0200
From: Carsten Laekamp <carsten.laekamp@wanadoo.fr>
Subject: Re: [netz] Re: Breaking the News
On Sun, Jul 04, 1999 at 09:11:46PM +0000, Kerry Miller wrote:
>
>
> > It is really ironical
> > that the _Netizens_ list should constantly serve to promote private
> > business.
>
> It s even more ironical that the list should have a hundred
> subscribers who never say anything!
It would be interesting to know why no-one seems to participate. I
am asking the question. Maybe someone will dare to reply ? <g>
Ahem... I'll make a start: somehow, it seems difficult for me to reply
to messages which are Cc's of replies sent to other lists or people
(and those make a big part of the total postings here)... especially
when those messages get into the intricacies of US law, which is
something I don't know much about.
Cheers,
- --
Carsten Läkamp
carsten.laekamp@wanadoo.fr
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 1999 00:17:57 +0000
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: Re: [netz] Re: Breaking the News
> it seems difficult for me to reply
> to messages which are Cc's of replies sent to other lists or people
> (and those make a big part of the total postings here)... especially
> when those messages get into the intricacies of US law, which is
> something I don't know much about.
While ICANN is a US corporation (non-profit, fwiw), the role it has
been given has a major effect on everybody, because it is to take
over from USG the 'technical administration' of the root servers
which NSI has been operating under contract - that is, .com, .net,
.edu, .org.
Due to various historical steps prior to ICANN, it was set up with
provisions made for *public participation, with geographical
distribution and all. Due to factors which are not clear in many
peoples' minds, getting the structures in place for this public
participation has been less important than satisfying the
commercial interests that trademark disputes will be settled by
some sort of uniform resolution policy, such as has been
reconmmended by WIPO (the intellectual property office under the
UN) -- and thus it seems to be up to the public to make itself aware
that it has a role to play. (For instance, there are supposed to be
elections in September of 9 board members -- and the membership
will have 3 weeks just prior to that time to get itself registered!)
As part of that public, Ronda's and my 'outreach' has been to post
bits of news from other lists which are more focussed on ICANNs
doings (the list that was created in 98 for discussion the
International Forum on the White Paper is one of them).
Thus, yes, you see CCs to names not on Netizens -- there is
almost never any *original traffic -- but the intent is to inform people
such as yourself that *something is going on, and hopefully arouse
your curiosity, even to the extent of forwarding those same posts to
other lists again.
In short, we have to assume that only when the 'at-large
membership' itself demands that its representatives be seated on
the Board of Directors will there be any attention paid to public (i.e.
non-commercial) interests in the way the Internet is actually run.
If you see another way to notify several million people that they
have a franchise -- another way that does not alienate them from
even touching the issues with a double-insulated pole -- by all
means, let's hear about it -- time is running short.
kerry
------------------------------
End of Netizens-Digest V1 #315
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