Dude! It's wired!

Steve Thompson stevet at sendon.net
Mon Dec 25 23:59:10 PST 2000



Quoting Tim May (tcmay at got.net):
> I haven't been posting here a lot for various reasons.

That's your business.  I just thought the meme sighting was funny.
 
> First, the quality of the responses has not been good. It seems 
> repartee and tired Nazi vs. Stalinist debate is the norm, with 
> Choatian physics and Choatian history filling in the gaps.

I don't quite know what to say to that.  Perhaps collective ennui (or
senility) has set upon most USENET denizens.  Odd that.  Personally, I would
have thought that name-calling would have lost its novelty after a few years.

> Second, and perhaps related to the first point, a lot of folks have 
> retreated to the safety of filtered lists, where Lewis and Perry can 
> screen messages for them. (Though I have noticed that a lot of 
> _political_ messages get cross-posted from Perrypunks, where they are 
> not supposed to exist, over to Cypherpunks. So much for the safe 
> haven of having list.monitors limiting "off-topic" discussion.)

They should know better.  I recall some of the uproar about the Cypherpunks
moderation experiment.

> Third, "been there, done that." Most of the topics surfacing now have 
> not new topics. Most topics were beaten to death by 1993. In fact, 
> most of the tangentially-crypto stuff is actually _less_ interesting 
> than the stuff in 1993 was. See the topics in 1992-1994 and compare 
> them to the topics in 1998-2000.

You're quite correct.  While I haven't had the time to actually read more than
a few messages from those days, it's obvious that the then fresh speculations
have become today's old news.  Now, those with the skills and resources are
busy planning and implementing that which they see will be profitable within
their planning horizons.  Few would be so short-sighted as to talk about their
work when it might hurt their income or revenue potential.  So, we wait for
product releases, legislation initiatives, etc.

> Fourth, as with my new .sig, the election has caused me to "move on," 
> at least until the direction of things is determined.

Sure.  It looks like most people (myself included) are waiting to see what
happens so they can amend their plans accordingly.  What else is there to do?

> As for what Bruce says in the above quote, nothing different from 
> what he's been saying for decades.

> He speaks of liquidating middlemen, I speak of liquidating tens of 
> millions of welfare varmints, useless eaters, and politicians.
 
Despite the fact that I disagree strongly with wholesale `liquidation', I at
least respect your candour -- and while I'd love to argue this point with you,
that, too, has been done to death.

However, I've at least got an incentive to stay off the welfare rolls.
 
> And for this they call him a visionary and me a Nazi. Go figure.

As they say, these things happen.


If I have anything useful to contribute to future discussions, I'll do so.  If
not, I'll just go back to lurking while I work on my own projects, education
and career, such as it is.


Regards,

Steve


-- 
Antidisintermediationalist and Posi-Trak advocate at large.





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