maggie~hamilton
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2006
- Messages
- 711
Contemplating the rapidity with which the ratio of chaff to wheat has exploded in every corner of the Internet offers a fascinating glimpse into human nature, or, if you will, even the Human Condition itself.
"The Internet" [long before it was called that] was devised in the late 1950s during the Cold War; a major milestone was reached in 1969 when the first electronic communication was transmitted between researchers at UCLA and Stanford.
Then the Internet really came of age as we now know it in 1983 with the development of the TCP/IP protocol; and then again in 1990 with the development of NSFNET; which was soon connected to the CSNET which linked universities around North America, and then to the EUnet which connected research facilities in Europe.
[Okay, I am going to try to keep from getting too bogged down here. If you wanna know what NSFNET, CSNET, etc., are, google the names.]
Anyway, prior to 1990, the Internet was a closely guarded enclave where scientists, researchers and academians shared and transmitted information and research data.
Then when the Government stepped in and transferred management of "The Internet" to independent organizations, it was made accessible to the Whole World, hence, the "World Wide Web."
Well, where there had once been nothing but the communication of scientific research and documentation, suddenly there were all these "home pages" with photos of people's side-yard gardens, their pets, and their 4-year-old's walk-on roles in the church play. And, then, before you could say "Dot.Com," commerce stepped in with web site advertising and sales, and the Internet became the great commercial wasteland it now is. And, of course, pornographers were also quick to jump on the bandwagon with their bottom-feeding fare.
Then came email. Again, it was originally used by researchers and scientists, then financial institutions began to avail themselves of the tool. I worked for CitiCorp Investment Management in the mid 1980s. We had one of the world's first modems, a toaster-sized plastic box that ran at the screaming speed of 640bps! To transmit a file from your computer to someone else's, you would place a telephone handset into the top of it, press the number of the recipient's computer connection, and the information was transmitted from comuter to computer through the telephone lines.
With the advent of faster, direct-connect modems, and then high-speed DSL and cable access, it was not long before advertisers and smut peddlers began spewing their junk mail and filth all over the place, to the point where now, most of us, if we did not employ spam filtering, would easily get 200-300 junk emails a day, most of them containing the most juvenile and mindless content imaginable ---- along with the half-dozen-or-so emails we receive with valid content.
Then came eBay. Originally, eBay was a genteel, polite, well-behaved community of people interested in vintage collectibles. It didn't take long for crap-sellers to hop on THAT bandwagon; now, eBay is nothing more than the world's largest flea market with all the usual cheap junk you see at any other flea market, just more of it. And, naturally, it's rife with crooks, scam artists and opportunists. And, again, pornographers.
Then came Wikipedia. Its noble, lofty aim was to create an "open source" compendium of information, compiled and maintained by its users. Here again, it took very little time before it became glutted with erroneous information and vaguely-disguised commercial content. To the point where now, it is a largely-useless source for reliable information.
And then we have YouTube. Need I say more? To find one or two really good, interesting, worthwhile bits on YouTube, one has to sift through an awful, awful lot of the worst and most banal content imaginable. For every clip of a virtuoso musician's masterful stylings, you come upon an endless parade of drooling, mentally impaired social misfits pounding out unintelligible noise on CasioTones. (Porn has largely been kept off of YouTube, but there are other YouTube-inspired sites that offer nothing BUT "adult content".)
And So It Goes.
Just a bit of social commentary on a gloomy Saturday afternoon.
~
CRL
=======
"Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and to coin one at random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.
"It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk."
-- Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think," Atlantic Monthly, July 1945
"The Internet" [long before it was called that] was devised in the late 1950s during the Cold War; a major milestone was reached in 1969 when the first electronic communication was transmitted between researchers at UCLA and Stanford.
Then the Internet really came of age as we now know it in 1983 with the development of the TCP/IP protocol; and then again in 1990 with the development of NSFNET; which was soon connected to the CSNET which linked universities around North America, and then to the EUnet which connected research facilities in Europe.
[Okay, I am going to try to keep from getting too bogged down here. If you wanna know what NSFNET, CSNET, etc., are, google the names.]
Anyway, prior to 1990, the Internet was a closely guarded enclave where scientists, researchers and academians shared and transmitted information and research data.
Then when the Government stepped in and transferred management of "The Internet" to independent organizations, it was made accessible to the Whole World, hence, the "World Wide Web."
Well, where there had once been nothing but the communication of scientific research and documentation, suddenly there were all these "home pages" with photos of people's side-yard gardens, their pets, and their 4-year-old's walk-on roles in the church play. And, then, before you could say "Dot.Com," commerce stepped in with web site advertising and sales, and the Internet became the great commercial wasteland it now is. And, of course, pornographers were also quick to jump on the bandwagon with their bottom-feeding fare.
Then came email. Again, it was originally used by researchers and scientists, then financial institutions began to avail themselves of the tool. I worked for CitiCorp Investment Management in the mid 1980s. We had one of the world's first modems, a toaster-sized plastic box that ran at the screaming speed of 640bps! To transmit a file from your computer to someone else's, you would place a telephone handset into the top of it, press the number of the recipient's computer connection, and the information was transmitted from comuter to computer through the telephone lines.
With the advent of faster, direct-connect modems, and then high-speed DSL and cable access, it was not long before advertisers and smut peddlers began spewing their junk mail and filth all over the place, to the point where now, most of us, if we did not employ spam filtering, would easily get 200-300 junk emails a day, most of them containing the most juvenile and mindless content imaginable ---- along with the half-dozen-or-so emails we receive with valid content.
Then came eBay. Originally, eBay was a genteel, polite, well-behaved community of people interested in vintage collectibles. It didn't take long for crap-sellers to hop on THAT bandwagon; now, eBay is nothing more than the world's largest flea market with all the usual cheap junk you see at any other flea market, just more of it. And, naturally, it's rife with crooks, scam artists and opportunists. And, again, pornographers.
Then came Wikipedia. Its noble, lofty aim was to create an "open source" compendium of information, compiled and maintained by its users. Here again, it took very little time before it became glutted with erroneous information and vaguely-disguised commercial content. To the point where now, it is a largely-useless source for reliable information.
And then we have YouTube. Need I say more? To find one or two really good, interesting, worthwhile bits on YouTube, one has to sift through an awful, awful lot of the worst and most banal content imaginable. For every clip of a virtuoso musician's masterful stylings, you come upon an endless parade of drooling, mentally impaired social misfits pounding out unintelligible noise on CasioTones. (Porn has largely been kept off of YouTube, but there are other YouTube-inspired sites that offer nothing BUT "adult content".)
And So It Goes.
Just a bit of social commentary on a gloomy Saturday afternoon.
~
CRL
=======
"Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and to coin one at random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.
"It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk."
-- Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think," Atlantic Monthly, July 1945
