Poet Ponders the Digital

Teaching colleagues, especially those in "New Media" and the "Digital Humanities," might find the pattern below interesting. The image is the report for activity on an academic mailing list from 1999 to present. Similar patterns are visible when I check other mailing lists. It's like the USENET statistics. Where are people going to discuss academic topics?  I left the WPA-L and other lists, because they were too often off-topic and/or not about scholarship and pedagogy. I didn't enjoy the mailing lists anymore. The fun was gone, though a core set of users remained active on other issues. Maybe that's the problem for all online spaces: they become insular.  The loss of RSS from some sites also reduced my connection to academic discussion. I really miss having easy access to RSS, and don't like Twitter or Facebook as my news feeds. From 2002 through 2010 was an active, exciting time for online communities. That's eight or nine y...

What happened to the blogosphere? Why is the USENET dead? How did Yahoo and Google groups (listserv-like services) wither so quickly? Why is podcasting struggling? The answers to some of the above questions are simple: USENET was killed because ISPs feared being sued for the amount of illegal files being distributed via the newsgroups. Groups and listservs died thanks to a mix of spam and inconvenient delivery methods. Who doesn't stuggle to manage a flood of email as it is, without mailing lists? Forums require frequent visits, and the "loudest," most annoying members drive the curious and open-minded away. Forums are now for true believers… arguing about ideological purity. Podcasts and music downloads have lost ground to streaming audio and audio-on-demand services. It's still "podcasting" in a form, but through larger services like iHeartRadio and TuneIn. Blogging and forums are the saddest loss, to me, though I miss the USENET programming ne...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley November 2008 Issue October 8, 2008 Less Internet, for the Sake of Children? You can always tell it is an election year when politicians get tough on crime and take action in the name of children. For the sake of “protecting our children” the Internet is getting slightly less useful. A seemingly minor change could have major repercussions. Long before the World Wide Web, there were newsgroup servers. The most famous network of these text-based message forums was the USENET. To this day many hardcore computer programmers, hackers, and other “uber geeks” prefer the forums known as the Usenet newsgroups to exchange ideas and debate technical concepts. In a July 21, 2008, letter to Internet Service Providers, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo accuses the ISPs of trafficking in child pornography by carrying the Usenet newsgroups. The two-page letter reflects a complete misunderstanding of the Usenet and of Internet technologies in general. Unfor...