Re: The great Debate

Per Platou (dbut@pobox.com)
Wed, 23 Dec 1998 00:50:50 +0100

Hi and welcome Leonard,
Sorry for nagging you first thing, I know lotsa people are fed up with
existensial debates, but I want to say one thing about your remark
"remember your audience". The net (of which much dance/technology stuff is
very related) should NOT be used or perceived as a traditional
sender-receiver mass medium. We should be aware of what form of
communication a mailing list is, for me it is primarily being able to
exchange information, thoughts and ideas each of us pick up, try out and
sometimes experience in our relatively small community. And, by all means,
I confess: I am a bad lurker too! A few of us (Scott delaHunta among
others) attended an extremely similar discussion of the european net.time
list just a couple of weeks ago at DEAF/Rotterdam, and concluded like
everyone else that it is a debate with no end. The degree of moderation
will (and should) be discussed frequently, but lets not make stupid and
pompous decisions.

One skill we all have learned since joining the net, is to filter
information of all kinds. Sometimes we do it by means of software or
filtrators/moderators, most of the time I for one do it by myself. For
instance, I delete spam manually (Yeah, I can hear your "wow!"s :)) without
even looking. That takes me about 2 seconds. The same goes for lousy
expressed searches on one of the big search engines ("4972846 queries
matched your search"). OK, reformulate, search again. 10 secs, or sometimes
10 mins or 1 hour. But all the "junk" I come across in that process tells
me something about the world, and I sometimes end up using it somehow. Art
by accident?

Lets stay heterogenous. And engaged. This discussion suddenly means a lot
to me. Hmmm. And Leonard, in my view you should make a printout of this
whole discussion and let your students take it further.

cu
Per

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