[Air-l] hmm, thinking about internet stories

Steve Jones sjones at uic.edu
Fri Mar 22 09:29:08 PST 2002


At 11:04 AM -0500 3/22/02, Rob Furr wrote:
>I guess what I'm wondering here is this: Sure, there's a million 
>stories on the net, but ... are there stories that *aren't* just 
>more of the same? Will telling someone who wasn't there the story of 
>the Great Worm teach them the basic lesson any better than telling 
>them the story of Melissa? Heck, I was heavily involved, at one 
>point, during the Green Card Lawyers debacle, and *I*'m not 
>interested in going back and reading up on that thing again.
>
>(Not to try to chill the conversation. If people have great stories 
>to tell, I'm all for it. I'm just wondering about the community 
>memory part of the question.)

Speaking of community memory, David Bennahum's memex.org site I've 
found to be a terrific resource (and I really enjoyed his "Extra 
Life" book but that may have been because, like "Almost Famous," it 
closely matched and resonated with my own histories).

Another good source the book Terri Senft (one of the people who was 
"there" when AoIR was founded, speaking of history) co-authored 
titled "History of the Internet (see 
http://www.historyoftheinternet.com/).

An interesting thing - two interesting things, I suppose - to me is 
whether we're able to "do history" while we're in the middle of it. 
Many of us have witnessed, or know someone who witnessed or was 
involved with, etc., what seem to be "historic" events related to the 
Internet. But do we have the means of understanding them at this 
time? And are we doing a good job of at least _collecting_ these 
histories from the participants?

Sj




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