ideas

• Life Cycle of Mailing Lists by Tatiana Matveeva (Inity), 11/26/98
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    • ideas about this forum by John, 12/5/98
      
      

Writing and reading in this open cyberforum is perhaps different than most other forums cuzz of the great variance of our singular personalities and our collective life experiences. Professionals and lay persons both enjoy the forum. Most visitors satisfy themselves with reading, few author a post. As it should be.

This forum, like John says, is a "sculpture". If so, art can not be art if no one appreciates it. I don't think there is really a big issue on how active this forum is, or even on what is posted generally. But I do think that what is perhaps a shortfall of this forum is that postings tend to be directed to a singular personality rather than to our collective experiences.

Finding a grounding topic is not so hard really --say what about George Orwell's book "1984". Or perhaps how cyberspace via the internet is taking on more of the educational and learning processes of the masses as the years go by (my eight year old daughter has been home schooled for two years now.) Is this generally wanted? Do we have a choice? Has Big Brother lost his big bad teeth or was Orwell correct enough we should all get worried? What about Microsoft? Why do we both love and hate Microsoft? How about WebTV? Makes the internet kinda just another channel to surf. Why not?

Seems easy enough to get some topics going. Why do they seem to fade away? Cuzz our replies seem to get tied into a posting to some individual(s) instead of to the whole of the readership. This then results in individuals reduced to sending private email back and forth; but in this forum of course, for all to read. Seems kinda dumb that way. That's the trouble I had with participating in that experiment with Robin last month. The idea was great; the whole thing just got reduced to be to narrow for my tastes. It became a personal heated discussion to deal with, instead of a forum focused Q&A dialogue. Ah well, live and learn.

I like to post. I enjoy the experience of knowing that other people also like to post. What I enjoy most though is that I know from experience that most people who read the posts in this forum don't respond with a post of their own in return, but that they respond nonetheless cuzz they have read the posts. Their are millions and millions of sites to visit and this forum is but one of those millions. In turn there are millions and millions of internet users, and some of those millions visit this site everday. I like that. A little part of me is out there in cyberspace, but the biggest part of me is with the readership, for I too lurk without posting on other forums, just like the rest of us.

Well, I can't pet my dog, but I can pet our three family cats, two birds, one guinea pig, and two goldfish!

as always,

• on getting a reply (or not) by John, 12/14/98