In the beginning, before about.com, there was....Usenet

Clueless Internet Newbie

I think "degraded" the discourse is a little harsh, since the "Jesus's Birthday" post was an earnest attempt to educate people. Now granted, some people are morons and posts stupid responses and answers, like on yahoo questions. Someone will give an earnest attempt at an answer, then three posts down you see something like "kittiecat19, you suck". Is there really any need for that? But that would bring us back to the discussion on trolls.

The wikipedia entry on eternal september reminds me of what facebook used to be: only availible to college students. You'd think that with a site only for bunch people going through higher education, there would be some level of sophistication. But then, high school students were allowed in. Soon after, anyone was allowed to join. facebook, I think, is slowly becoming like myspace, where anyone and everyone can have a site. I am all for freedom of speech and everything, but myspace has definately been degraded, and facebook, in a year or two, will probably also go downhill.

Back in the early 90's, a discussion group probably sounded pretty cool, like an online forum for shared knowledge.The idea was a legitimate notion. Now, it just brings to mind chatrooms, which are now often troll havens and forums for people to act immaturely.

The memex seemed like a good idea back them, but to me, it seems laughable, since what was proposed was in reality and ancient computer database. I'm so used to researching electronically that it is hard to picture conducting research any other way. Granted, I have a stack of books in my room for a project, but I found them through the electronic card catalog.

The cabal concept was sort of an usenet police force (from my understanding). There is such a thing as free speech, but there are also concepts such as standards and decorum that need to be applied as well. 

all this stuff about links and organization/archiving seems ancient; I'm so accustomed to it. To me and many of my other classmates, I'm sure we can't remember the internet being any other way than it is today.

"As a result, authors were expected to excerpt and cite the relevant passages in posts to which they responded."

Dr Jerz talked about how blogging styles influence. This quote sums up how we blog here.

The titles of those blogs mentioned shortly after this quote are surely meant to be good headlines. They are meant to draw curious people in; they are probably surprised when what they see is an intelligent conversation.

"Those standards rankled him, because it meant that he was being asked to change the writing style he had developed in his personal journal"

this brings us back to our discussion about appropriate blogging techniques. It's an academic blog: faculty will be able to see it. And I don't really think that any blog is private: there will always be hackers and spammers. I already got one within 5 hours of posting my EL405 youtube video.