Decline of the Cypherpunks list...Part 19

Tim May timcmay at got.net
Mon Dec 8 11:41:43 PST 2003


On Dec 8, 2003, at 11:08 AM, Freematt357 at aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 12/7/2003 10:58:00 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> timcmay at got.net writes:
>
>> My generation was very active, on all sides. The droids born after
>> about 1980 are mainly followers. Probably what the nose rings are for.
>>
>
> Hey Tim, why don't you continue your activism and make an attempt to 
> get your
> writing into more places where generation X might find it. If they are 
> truly
> droids surely you with your grand intellect could be become their pied 
> piper,
> leading their revolution.
>
> You might feel better venting to the cloistered culture here on CP, 
> but what
> good does that do?

I'm not interested in trying to get published in "Down with WTO Times" 
or "Skateboard Magazine," or whatever it is that these kids are 
reading. (Actually, I don't think most of them do much reading. I spend 
a lot of time in the great bookstores in Santa Cruz--rarely do I see 
the "persons of piercing" leave their hangouts out on Pacific Avenue to 
enter the bookstores, except to try to use the restrooms.)

And the problem is not even so much with Gen X but with Gen Y, or 
whatever they are being called these days.

I reach who I reach. Their choice to read what I write.

I see an explosion of Blogs, the daily musings of people involved in 
EPIC, EFF, etc.

This is similar to the explosion of personal Web pages several years 
ago, when home pages had snippets of philosophy, lists of books people 
had read, etc.

(And perhaps just as so many of these personal Web pages fell into 
disrepair and were seldom looked-at by others, the wave of personal 
Blogs will crest and then decline in amplitude.)

So, you are free to be "Matt Gaylor, Activist!" and to try to get 
articles published in "Liberty" or "Gold Currency Times" or wherever 
you get published, but I have other things I'd rather be doing.

Preaching to me that I ought to be sacrificing my time for the 
betterment of some skatepunks by publishing in "Piercing Magazine" is 
the silliest kind of altruistic thinking.


--Tim May





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