From: cudep@warwick.ac.uk (Ian Dickinson)
Subject: Re: problem with alt.uu.* groups?
Organization: Team Limpid's Meathead With Aptitude - Kunst und Wahnsinn
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 15:56:38 GMT

In article <6lcpb7kc@cck.coventry.ac.uk> esz001@cck.coventry.ac.uk (Will Overington) writes:
>I feel that this is partly because in many ways it implicitly challenged
>the status quo, over, for example, the 'going rate' choice in the world
>as it is that one is either able to pay fees for education or one goes
>without education.

You presume wrongly in my case.

>Also, I feel that joyful utopianism can only thrive in an appropriate
>environment of encouragement and mutual support. It seems that utopian
>dreams are easily shouted down upon appeals to being reasonable, that
>is, to being reasonable in a 'going rate' nastiest variety of capitalism
>way.

Are you calling me a capitalist?

>For example, I suggested early on that we design a Usenet University
>scarf. This suggestion, made in good faith, was criticised as something
>of external form before getting internal content. So, my idea was lost.
>I genuinely feel that, had people designed a scarf and interested people
>had each gone out and bought some cloth and made a Usenet University scarf
>and worn it as winter arrives, then the sense of camaraderie would have
>assisted the learning process.

!

>I suggested a concept called Self Awarded Credits. This was criticised,
>often without reasons being given. It was controversialized. The idea
>was lost. Maybe it could have been knocked into shape as something such
>as Self Claimed Credits, with much the same underlying concept.
>Yet no.

Once again, I criticised the amount of effort put into designing a
certificate, not the process itself, though there was a lot more work
required.

>Also, there seems to be a self defeating attitude around that any matter
>of having rules and procedures for doing anything is to be shouted down
>as too much red tape.

That amount of red tape before anything has even been started doesn't sound
like a good starting point to me.

>Yet many fun things in life have to have formality. For example,
>preserving and restoring an old steam locomotive. The legal framework
>helps, the rules help.

But legal framworks fall when they are applied to things which are newer
than the law.  Rules for UU could falter in the same manner, since no one
really knows what UU would look like.

>I have thought of suggesting alt.utopianism as a forum where people
>can put forward ideas and have them discussed in an atmosphere where
>utopianism is the norm.

As yet another newsgroup from your fertile mind, which you discard soon after?

>Look, if you want Usenet University to get going then please say so
>by POSTING to alt.uu.future.

Good point and I would like to see this happen also.

>I think that we need to realize that if we are going to get anything
>going then we are going to have to put in a lot of effort.

Yes.  And I believe that something good *WILL* come of this.

>[STUFF DELETED]
>And broadcasting those packages in the teletext lines of CNN all over
>the world.
>Yes, a utopian dream.

I suggest you read the Handel & Huber book "Integrated Broadband Networks".
Teletext lines may work, but B-ISDN or something of similar capability is
what would really do the idea justice.  And that sort of capability will
hopefully be commonplace in the not too distant future.

Cheers,
-- 
\/ato - Ian Dickinson - NIC handle: ID17                              Yo! Bum 
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