Fantastic article. Wow, brought me back. BBS*s, Warez, yow. I
think there*s definitely a paper in this, a study. On BBS*s, you
had the TOP POSTERS and if you did door games, you wanted to
make it onto the high score tables, very similar to arcades.
Oooooh! Arcades! An interesting mix of computer mediated and
meatspace (yes, I used that word, but no other word is better I
s*pose) is the local arcade in the 1980*s. You*d work to get the
high score. I was the mysterious KEN on a goofy Road Runner game
in 1987 (one of the much later games). When I*d come in, those
who were affeciados of the game would go, *Hey, that*s KEN*.
It*s a small thing, but I still remember it. It was an
interesting time, the time of the arcades. They*re still around
but we live in a *SAFER* time where you don*t have to worry
about weirdos hanging out at the local arcade (where the local
cops could theoretically keep an eye on them) but rather weirdos
hanging out on MySpace, where NOBODY (well, nobody really) is
watching. *Ah, my kid is safe here at home, not like the arcades
when we were kids and the neighborhood guy with the funny face
and the 15 dogs and the motorcycle would hang out. While i*m at
it, I*ll put the computer in his/her room so he/she has some
privacy*. Usenet STILL hasn*t been beat for networking people
who like to think. There are thousands (millions? Hard to say)
of *forums* online. But they*re not NETWORKED. The forums don*t
talk to one another. It*s irritating to have these closed-wall
forums that don*t talk to other forums. On Usenet, the
newsgroups all talked to one another and a message you send
could be propagated to thousands of machines around the world in
minutes or hours, yet each operator of the Usenet groups could
decide which groups its site would get and furthermore, you
yourself could easily decide which ones you wanted to look at,
customizing the experience. Anyhow, getting yourself listed in a
FAQ makes you *somebody*. When my list of Deskmate programs got
put into a comp.sys.tandy FAQ I was thrilled and became a *tandy
guy*. Of course I was following a dead technology but that*s
what makes it all the more interesting. Thanks for the ramble!
Caio! Kenneth Udut P.S. - if you want to see a retro
Gopher-style website, see [1]
http://retro.naplesplus.us to bring
you back. I just put it up yesterday and I think you*ll get a
kick out of it. No social interaction there though, nor status.
References
Visible links
1.
http://retro.naplesplus.us
http://free.naplesplus.us/links/click.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fretro.naplesplus.us
