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tcepsaI've recently been introduced to the concept of Eternal September. Briefly, it refers to the period after September 1993. Prior to that, the main way to connect to Usenet newsgroups was through a college or university. Each year, in September, there was an influx of new freshmen who were just discovering this method of communication and were completely unfamiliar with its etiquette. As a result, correspondingly at that time there would generally be a spike in the level of rudeness, banality, etc. in Usenet posts while the newbies discovered the ropes and either acclimated and adopted the culture or got bored and wandered off or were chased away.
Many people feel that that changed in 1993, when AOL began providing Usenet access to its customers. Now, instead of a spike in September, newbies were joining constantly as they signed up with AOL and/or discovered this new feature being provided. As a result, the overall average etiquette of Usenet dropped and stayed down, instead of recovering as it had in the past. It is as though that September never ended, and that the etiquette of Usenet never really returned to the level at which it had been. The concept has been expanded upon, and also is now sometimes used to refer to the Internet as a whole, with its constant stream of new users as computers and the Internet become more and more accessible to a larger and larger portion of the population. Correspondingly, the overall level of civility has allegedly continued to drop.
This leaves me thinking that if people were smart enough to use the technology of that time to create the Internet, then people of this time ought to be smart enough to use our technology to create or discover a solution to this problem. The initial thing that comes to my mind as a potential solution would be a kind of parallel Internet or Usenet. (I call this concept the "Unternet", both from the German "unter" which means "under", and from the prefix "Un", which together suggest something that is a different layer than most people see when they look at the Internet, and something that is not the Internet, though it may have some things in common).
Unfortunately, while I think that it is an incredibly catchy name, I'm having a very difficult time envisioning the details of how such a thing would be implemented. Currently I have a hunch that there are a few enclaves scattered about: citadels--or perhaps ivory towers--of the sort of inquiry and exchange that the Eternal September has been so detrimental to. I don't know of any in particular, but it seems like the sort of thing that might spring up in response to this. Unfortunately that has its own set of problems, such as people not being able to find it, or not being able to get in. ~grin~ It seems like there ought to be a sort of secret society, with clues scattered across the Internet for intrepid geeks to search out and puzzle through in order to gain entrance. Then again, perhaps there is, and I have simply not been intrepid enough to find it yet. ~smile~ Maybe the first clue is right in front of my eyes, steganographically encoded in Google's logo with a key of "127.0.0.1". After all, the greatest treasure can be found in one's home. Perhaps that contains a link to what appears to be a blank page, or even a 404, but actually the next step is hidden in the page's header, possibly a cookie sent down from the server. You use that code to decipher another steganographic clue, this one hidden in the I Made You A Cookie LOLcat on icanhascheezburger.com, which gives you a Telnet address to an old UNIX box and a login. You'll need to figure out that the reason the address looks invalid is because it's in Big Endian, and once you convert it to Little Endian you get a valid address. You use the login, and get the next clue from the fortune message that pops up...
Unfortunately, I'm not yet that intrepid, and really it shouldn't be quite that obscure. You still need, I think, to have a September, or something akin to it--a period or a way for fresh users to find it and be exposed to it and either make it and become a part of the community, or not and wander away.
So, can anyone out there point me in the direction of the first clue (and maybe give me some practical pointers on steganography)? ~grin~
Many people feel that that changed in 1993, when AOL began providing Usenet access to its customers. Now, instead of a spike in September, newbies were joining constantly as they signed up with AOL and/or discovered this new feature being provided. As a result, the overall average etiquette of Usenet dropped and stayed down, instead of recovering as it had in the past. It is as though that September never ended, and that the etiquette of Usenet never really returned to the level at which it had been. The concept has been expanded upon, and also is now sometimes used to refer to the Internet as a whole, with its constant stream of new users as computers and the Internet become more and more accessible to a larger and larger portion of the population. Correspondingly, the overall level of civility has allegedly continued to drop.
This leaves me thinking that if people were smart enough to use the technology of that time to create the Internet, then people of this time ought to be smart enough to use our technology to create or discover a solution to this problem. The initial thing that comes to my mind as a potential solution would be a kind of parallel Internet or Usenet. (I call this concept the "Unternet", both from the German "unter" which means "under", and from the prefix "Un", which together suggest something that is a different layer than most people see when they look at the Internet, and something that is not the Internet, though it may have some things in common).
Unfortunately, while I think that it is an incredibly catchy name, I'm having a very difficult time envisioning the details of how such a thing would be implemented. Currently I have a hunch that there are a few enclaves scattered about: citadels--or perhaps ivory towers--of the sort of inquiry and exchange that the Eternal September has been so detrimental to. I don't know of any in particular, but it seems like the sort of thing that might spring up in response to this. Unfortunately that has its own set of problems, such as people not being able to find it, or not being able to get in. ~grin~ It seems like there ought to be a sort of secret society, with clues scattered across the Internet for intrepid geeks to search out and puzzle through in order to gain entrance. Then again, perhaps there is, and I have simply not been intrepid enough to find it yet. ~smile~ Maybe the first clue is right in front of my eyes, steganographically encoded in Google's logo with a key of "127.0.0.1". After all, the greatest treasure can be found in one's home. Perhaps that contains a link to what appears to be a blank page, or even a 404, but actually the next step is hidden in the page's header, possibly a cookie sent down from the server. You use that code to decipher another steganographic clue, this one hidden in the I Made You A Cookie LOLcat on icanhascheezburger.com, which gives you a Telnet address to an old UNIX box and a login. You'll need to figure out that the reason the address looks invalid is because it's in Big Endian, and once you convert it to Little Endian you get a valid address. You use the login, and get the next clue from the fortune message that pops up...
Unfortunately, I'm not yet that intrepid, and really it shouldn't be quite that obscure. You still need, I think, to have a September, or something akin to it--a period or a way for fresh users to find it and be exposed to it and either make it and become a part of the community, or not and wander away.
So, can anyone out there point me in the direction of the first clue (and maybe give me some practical pointers on steganography)? ~grin~
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no subject
Date: 2007-12-31 09:53 am (UTC)www.somethingawful.com
It's got tards on it, but they are generally ridiculed or banned. Idiots are banned cheerfully, and there are rules to follow to stay on, most of which boil down to "don't be a dick, and read everything". There are some bad areas on the forums, but they're pretty evident of themselves. Otherwise, it's a decent crowd of geeks. :) Also, crack, if you wander around looking for threads that hit Gold. *smirk*
no subject
Date: 2007-12-31 11:14 pm (UTC)In retrospect I think restricting if and how much someone can post, based on the quality of their contributions, is a workable approach in many cases.
And yes, we had to deal with all the "you're being elitist" issues surrounding this. In many peoples' eyes, yes, we were. Some people we invited declined to join for that reason, and I respect that. But we were also sick and tired of seeing the most experienced and knowledgable memebers of those forums annoyed into silence and non-participation by noisy newbies.