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p2p news / p2pnet: By pure coincidence, most of today’s posts are columns, one of which is from Bill Thompson on ‘silver surfers‘. Under it there’s a comment post which asks, what about you jon? =) ?
The link goes to a story slugged Big Music Sues Schoolgirl, Mainstream Media Doesn’t Care. But since it doesn’t have anything to do with silver surfers (there’s gotta be a better euphemism that that, Bill : ) it must be referring to the pic (right).
Thompson defines ’silver surfers’ as people over the age of 50. And that’s me. He goes on, “Although the number of people over 50 using the web is increasing along with the general population - and government statistics show that the proportion ages 55-64 is actually growing faster than any other - many of these people need help and encouragement once they do get online.”
That’s me too and if you care exactly how old I am, go here and work it out for yourself ; D
Meanwhile, in the 1990s I had a site called OTRiCS (On The Road in CyberSpace). Ultimately, I couldn’t afford the bandwidth, and it didn’t occur to me to look for ads to support it.
Anyhow, a couple of minutes ago, I used the WayBack machine (a fantastic, really under-rated and under-appreciated site) to see if there were any OTRiCS pages still around. And there were.
I was looking because when I first went online, one thing really made me sit up and think and in the OTRiCS intro I’d written:
“Everyone’s equal and no matter what your interests are, you’ll find someone who shares them. In *real* life, you don’t get to pick and choose. On the Net, you do. If you’ve got the time and energy, you can play a part in events. Any part you choose. You can be anyone, or anything, you want.
“You can be 15 or 50. You can be black, white, yellow, red or pink with purple polka-dots. A blond can be a brunette. Men can be women. You can have your vice, versa. It doesn’t matter how many arms, legs or other body parts you have, or don’t have.
“Nobody will know and if they did, they probably wouldn’t give a damn. Who owns the Net? No one. Who controls it? No one. There’s no HQ, no Sign-Up Central, no supreme body making up rules and regulations and even if there were, there’d be no way of really enforcing them, the continuing efforts by the people who want to impose their will on the Net notwithstanding.”
In other words, the Net is the Great Leveller and what was true (to me) then is even more true today.
I understand what Thompson is saying but frankly, IMHO, sex, religion, age, etc, still don’t matter a damn. Anyone can go online and be whatever they want to be.
If in 1997 it was true you could play a part in events, p2p and blogs have made it even more so today.
And anyone who needs help - wood, tin, brass, silver, gold, diamond - will get it. All they have to do is ask.
End of rant.
The Silver Surfer ;D
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November 6th, 2005 at 10:48 pm
“Who owns the Net? No one. Who controls it? No one.”
But the assault to exert control over the disparate elements of the ‘internet’, which have empowered the individual, grassroot organizations or allow or facilitate popular dissent to the established controls (be it governmnt or corporate mandates…or political capital heh) is constantly being waged upon us from a variety of vectors….I guess the old (analogue) saying of, and I paraphrase here, “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance” applies just as much now as it did when it was first uttered.
TT