Sender: Rare Books and Special Collections Forum <EXLIBRIS@RUTVM1.BITNET>
Sandy Mason's usual level-headedness seemed to slope south today when she
suggested we all provide brief bios. Can we spare the net, and our mailboxes,
305 pages of bio material please? In most cases I must say I think most of
us don't need to know too much, and if we have a functional need we can
ask.
The libertarian, populist aspects of the net exist not only because of the
character of much of the technical population (though that is the case too),
but because of the nature of the medium: it is anonymous in ways we aren't
used to in other media. There are plusses and minuses to this; but rather
than trying to make it conform to what we're used to -- the drawing room,
the seminar, the phone call -- it's probably wise to let the new usages
evolve. These seem to include the value rather than the liability of not seeing
quite who is at the other end of the wire, and thus not having preconceptions
based on appearance, clothes, pedigree, speech patterns, and the like. We
begin recognizing quality--low, high--from the nature of the communications
themselves. Verb.sap.
--Peter Graham