From: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (salvador dali on x)
Subject: Re: *HEY! BROADCAST OF AGRIPPA TONIGHT!!*
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Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 92 01:39:40 GMT

Somewhere in Cyberspace, Clayten_Hamacher@mindlink.bc.ca said about
'*HEY! BROADCAST OF AGRIPPA TONIGHT!!*': 
|What's all the fuss about something Gibson wrote? He's not even a very good
|author and you guys are contemplating spending over $600 to get a copy of
|something he wrote which can supposedly only be read once...
|
|First, if the computer can decode the information to display it then so can
|someone going through instruction by instruction. There's no such thing as a
|disk that will boot, yet is uncrackable.
|
|Second, isn't the whole thing about cyberspace (in the sense that you all
|seem to interpret it) sharing of information, especially something like this
|that isn't going to hurt someone if released (such as private hospital
|records etc..).
|
|
|This is REALLY pathetic, everyone says Gibson is the 'father of Cyberpunks'
|so you all rush out and buy his books and drool over every word he says. Why
|don't you all quit whining about what a REAL cyberpunks is and use the nets
|for what they were meant, information transfer, not immature posing.

Ok, well, then, if you see this as a problem, why contribute to it by
posting this message, rather than start up a new conversation?  I
don't mean to flame, just to provide some advice that I'm pretty
confident would work and satisfy your concerns....

This group is not *totall-e* iMmAtUrE, although there is certainly
nothing wrong with a discussion that ranges from playground
MyDadYourDad to highly technical info like Bell's theorem....

Rather than shun immaturity, we should realize it as a fact of life:
we are all immature relative to someone else, since noone that exists
on this earth, as far as we know, holds the gold key of universal
knowledge, thus there are always going to be people who are more
immature and more mature....And maturity is also subjective, and
relative to one's own ideas/thoughts/concepts....There is no set
definition of mature and immature acts...

When you're dealing with a group of PUNKS, what you argue as mature
may be immature by others' standards, and what you see as immaturity
on their behalf may be regarded as highly mature by others, and
neither opinion is completely correct since no universal truth exists....

|Grow up, go find an author whose work you like, be it Gibson, Heinlein,
|Sterling, Asimov, or any other, just so long as you like their work and
|respect their ideas for your own reasons, not because someone else tells you
|that 'Real Cyberpunk's like Gibson's work'.

I agree..... I am a Gibson-I-Love-You type, but I hate Agrippa for
it's poetic value, though I deeply respect it for it's
mediumisthemessage value...

|There's more that can be said but I'll leave it at this, I suppose I'll be
|yelled at by everyone because I broke a taboo..Gibson's writing is like the
|Emperor's new clothes, don't mention it/they suck/are non-existent and maybe
|nobody will notice.

There are no taboos on this group.  As long as you would not flame a
person whose vision of Cyberpunk is derived solely from Mondo 2000,
then you are by all means certainly entitled to say GIBSON SUX.....

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