[vcf-midatlantic] The good old days of user groups

[Matt Reynolds]

Well said Herb.

On Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 1:49 PM Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic <
vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

> Jeff jonas says:
>
> > giving them the false sense of entitlement
> > that Internet access is a "right".
> > No, like driving, it is a PRIVILEGE.
>
> "The Internet" was many things at many points in time. The ARPAnet was
> VERY privileged - for national defense and research. So it was
> something, then it became something else. Technology which was once
> scarce, but becomes a commodity, does that. My recent post described
> "scarcity" of personal computing technology.
>
> Many people lament the loss of the past. But this forum is not a
> political or social-action arena. So a discussion of the politics of the
> Internet is likely off-topic. I am not in charge so that's merely my
> working opinion.
>
> I will not debate rights versus privileges here, except to say Internet
> access is such an essential service to live and work in this country,
> that I think calling it a "privilege" and thus revocable is less than
> optimal.
>
> As for the past of social behavior, yeah, many people behave poorly
> these days on da Internets, and we also get access to that along with
> everything else we get. I don't think that's new. Imagine if you had to
> sit on a streetcorner in a busy city, and see *every single thing that
> happened there*. Now imagine, someone else feeds you views of the worst
> of it - for "free" (free access so your name is sold to people who want
> to sell you stuff). Who do we blame for that, eh?
>
> > The burning of the library of Alexandria pales in comparison
> > to the information and personal effort destroyed
> > every time a hard drive fails or a major web page does down.
>
> I don't know that. "It's harder to delete than it is to save". Stuff
> gets lost over time but there's services that preserve some of it and
> there's a lot of duplication. And a lot of stuff is very "forgetable".
> The Alexandria library was like destroying HALF "the internet" of the
> era (the other half being held in other cultures).
>
> A value of vintage computing is to preserve history, in various forms.
> People are telling their stories, they are informative and are being
> preserved by telling. I'm a technologist by training, I preserve
> physical stuff, but it has human meaning and a context of development
> and use. I have stumbled into history.
>
> Regards, Herb Johnson
>
> --
> Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA
> http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net
> preserve, recover, restore 1970's computing
> email: hjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT com
> or try later herbjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT info
>