Last Tuesday (Mar 29), I was at the
Triangle Bloggers Regional Meetup,
graciously hosted by
Anton
Zuiker, and
Jane
Peppler commented how there's an amnesia today (unlike times
past?) about history, among younger people. I've run into the same
thing in different contexts: sports, the Catholic Church, politics,
so I doubt whether this is something peculiar to the late 20th,
early 21st century.
Another blogger at the meetup,
David Warlick and I chatted
briefly after the formal meeting broke up, and it turns out he was
a
sysop way back
when, as I was (I ran a
Wildcat!
bulletin board, mostly for
echomail on
FidoNet;
some archives
here).
A few years later, I abandoned the BBS, but an even older one,
the WELL marks its twentieth
anniversay with parties and reminiscences beginning tomorrow.
You are invited: Celebrate
with us online and off as The WELL turns Twenty in April
2005!.
The WELL = Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, and
Stewart
Brand (link is to an interview), who founded the
Whole Earth
Catalog waaaay back in 1968, started this electronic meeting
and discussion place. There's an August, 1985, interview with Brand
at
The
WELL: Interview with Stewart Brand (8/85), (hat tip to
Quartopiano's Radio Weblog
(you have to scroll down a bit)), at the
Netweaver Blog, a
site I hadn't been aware of until poking around the 'nte for this
post.
This space will contain the archives of the old
Netweaver Newsletter as well as current comments. ...
Netweaver was the electronic newsletter of the Electronic
Networking Association (ENA). ENA was formed in April, 1985 by a
group of folks who were interested in the social and human aspects
of the new medium of electronic networking. At the time, other
organizations were focused on the engineering issues and/or the
challenges of large scale users (for example, The Electronic Mail
Association).
ENA's mission was:
To promote electronic networking in ways that:
- enrich individuals
- enhance organizations
- and build global communities
In 1991, ENA "sunsetted" itself in light of the many new
organizations and SIGs springing up to take on various aspects of
the mission. By then, there were other organizations looking at
computer supported cooperative work, computers for social
responsibility, telecommunications law, distance education and
more. But, before it was done, ENA held 4 face-to-face conferences
in DC, Allentown PA, Philadelphia, and San Francisco that drew
participants from across the country and around the world. ENA also
contributed to international conferences, including the first
conference on electronic networking in Japan. Many members of the
ENA network are still the ones working in other organizations and
initiatives to promote the human and social side of the web.
...
One of the amazing things about looking at some of these old
articles is that so many of the same issues, themes, and hopes are
still alive in discussions in newsgroups, on listservs, in online
communities, in blogs and at conferences of people interested in
the social and human side of networking. We'll be making
connections from here to some of the current
conversation.
I don't have any magic ideas on how to reduce the amnesia Jane
Peppler mentioned or I've noticed, especially since there doesn't
seem much interest in reducing it by those who suffer from it. At
times, I get a 'pearls before swine' ('neque mittatis margaritas
vestras ante porcos' in the Vulgate, did you know 'pearls' here is
'margaritas'?, not bacatus -a -um) attitude, but we do what we
can.