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