On Thu, 6 Jan 1994, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
Any sufficiently advanced mailing list is indistinguishable from noise.
Perry
I realize we're all supposed to smile knowingly at this cynical remark; but I can't let the cynicism pass without a commentary. If the list is advanced, then the issues being discussed may strike newbies as arcane -- this is noise only to the uninitiated. And repeated threads may strike old-timers as rehash -- and therefore a kind of noise. But -- at least as far as Cypherpunks goes -- even apparently repetitive threads have new slants, unforeseen shadings of personal meaning, and new contexts to save them from being considered as just noise. "The main cause of failure in education," said A.N. Whitehead, "is staleness." And a stale reader will hear only noise if the attention isn't focussed enough to see the actually new within the apparently old.