The Arachnet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture __________________________________________________________________ ISSN 1068-5723 June 30, 1993 Volume 1 Issue 4 SQARV1N4 HART THE RATE OF CHANGE OF THE RATE OF CHANGE by Michael Hart This is the fastest rate of change history ever experienced: Last week I posted a price list for gigabyte drives that was roughly equivalent to the prices of megabyte drives only ten years ago, thus indicating that even without compression, it is 1,000 times cheaper to store Alice in Wonderland on these hard disks than it was on those hard disks available in 1983 and earlier. With compression, which comes standard on most operating systems today, it is 2,000 times cheaper. Never before in history has the price of something decreased to 1/1,000th or 1/2,000th of the previous price so quickly. Not only are our computers storing vastly greater quantities of data, but they are also processing this hundreds of times times faster for a small fraction of the price of the decade old computers such as the IBM XT which was hundreds of times faster and a small fraction of the cost of the computers the decade of 1973 had to offer. For example: $1500-$2000 will buy you a 486 with 66mHz chip speed 100 times faster than the XT, and you will also get in the same package a hard drive with several hundred megabytes and Super VGA card and monitor, with 24 pin printer, a mouse and a bundle of other goodies. Even greater is the computers' capability to deal with items if increasing diversity, including photographs, stereo sound and even motion pictures. Computers now even store and "print" three dimensional items using lasers to harden a liquid plastic in whatever form you may wish to create. Thus, any person may have an exact copy of priceless sculptures, in addition to a more mundane exact copy of items such as books, paintings, and the like already available for downloading from a variety of sites. For those of you interested in 3-D replication, look up this term: "Stereographic Lithography." If enough people send a note requesting more on this and other 3-D application, they will be included in future articles in this series. This is the first of a series of columns titled "The Rate of Change of the Rate of Change," written for EJVC: "The Electronic Journal of Virtual Culture." The subjects will be related to the changes bringing this Virtual Culture and this journal to you, changes that are increasing the modes and speeds of communication. . .just think what it must have been like when messages such as I am sending today, June 21, 1933, took weeks or months for the single recipients to get them, while this message has thousands of direct recipients, who will receive it in an hour after the editors have cut, pasted and set margins I messed up below. . .they are supposed to be all 60, and I accidentally wrote part of them with 64. . .my apologies. Estimates range from the medium to distant future for the day to day uploading and downloading of this kind of info on a day to day basis. The Virtual Culture is expanding, and so quickly, that even the experts are way behind this expansion: one such expert, whose name I will not reveal in public, stated this year that the Virtual Book was the product of the 90's. . .and with the growth rate of etext being such as it is, is it any wonder that it should have grown so quickly that even experts in the field might not be aware the etexts for human consumption have been in an online database since 1971, and that before that were the etexts that were meant to be read by computers only [1965 and 1949, as I recall, for several religious works]. In real life, you can load your computer with hundreds of billions of characters of free information, or you can do network links to that information, so it LOOKS like those files are part of your computer but YOU don't have to pay for the storage yourself and retrieval may also be a free activity, or retrieval may have a variety of costs. Let me use Alice in Wonderland as an example again. Even when it appears something is free, it might cost you some few cents [5.6 where I am] just to make the phone call to download something. If that something is the size of the book Alice in Wonderland [150K] and you buy your 1.44 for a little under $.50 [the going mail order rate] then that phone call costs you the same as storing this material on a permanent basis. . .THUS. . .it is not worthwhile to do your searching of Alice through an online database. The (dis)advantages of remote and local storage are going to be part of this series as sometimes it is important to have your information, especially when the link is down. On the other hand, searching a HUGE database gigabytes in size with a HUGE supercomputer that someone has so kindly made available to you free or at low expense. . .then the cost/benefit ratio swings in the other direction. *** The editors have pretty much decided not to edit this, so any errors and comments should be sent to me as below. I will digress sometimes and switch from singular to plural to indicate the difference between what I think or do and what a group thinks or does, please don't mention those. "THE RATE OF CHANGE OF THE RATE OF CHANGE" The title is derived from the way I look at the world, as an accelerating and decelerating set of changes. . .so, I guess I can be said to be opening with a contradiction of one of the more famous sayings of all time: "Nothing is constant, except change." [or "Everything changes except change."] [Of course, like most famous quotations, it is inaccurate and the originals might be said to be better, and I would provide those too, on request.] Several of our more famous commentators on the net have a position that the rate of change is a relatively constant item still, and quite naming or quoting them I would like to disagree with what they have said. I have learned, on most occasions that it is an efficient policy NOT to quote directly NOR to name those quoted, as it causes a degeneration of both the conversation and the relationships with those in question. In this case, this pair that I am paraphrasing know exactly what I mean. Doubling rates are usually expressed in terms of decades, such as how many decades it takes for some populations to double, how many decades it takes for automobile mileage, or other items of economic interest to double or halve. In this case, however, it is obvious to casual observers: for something to have increased to 1,000 times it doubles just about exactly each year for a 10 year period. These exact figures: 1.995+ times per year. . .to check; 1.995 raised to the 10th power equals 998.7 or so. So, in this case we have had storage doubling about every year for ten years in a row so you can buy 5 gigabytes of drive space today for close to the same price 5 megabytes cost you anything over 10 years ago. HOWEVER, traffic of the Virtual Culture of the networks-- that is an even more spectacular growth rate NOT DOUBLING every year, but MORE THAN QUINTUPLING EVERY YEAR. This, and its effects, real, probable, and possible, will be the focus of this series of articles. These concepts are apparently something that not everyone thinks are obvious: a fact I have had rubbed in over the years by a great many people. However, I think they are the most important aspect of an already filled world of important aspects. HOW and WHY am I going to bring this to your attention? And to the attention of people not already at least in on some part of the Virtual Culture already? First the WHY part. I want to see everyone have an education; after all, this is supposed to be an Age of Information, and has supposed to have been an age of Universal Education for quite some time now. I think Democracy requires Universal Education; without a sufficient amount of information and education how does a population make any choices about running their lives, or their country? Without enough information, the small bit of information a person gets amounts to propaganda. . .it "propagates" itself without challenge. We need enough information and education to challenge all we are told, including what we believe already. . .if our responsibility as citizens is to be fulfilled. Now for the HOW part. I am afraid that here I am going to have difficulties and I ask YOU to help me. I am going to offer you something, and I am going to ask something of you in return. You see, to describe something to someone who hasn't seen it, and do it well enough to make the description useful, well that has NOT been my strongest trait. I tend to put people off with my statements, probably because they must sound pretty grandiose, and even when I have the figures, yeah. . .I know, to back them up, it is still a difficult proposition to tell somebody something really important-- without engendering a desire to deny the message and with the message, deny the messenger. Of course, I sometimes do it backwards, but still in just as effective a manner. . .they deny the messenger and the message gets lost because I was not a good messenger. Communication among machines is a SCIENCE: communication among human beings is an ART. Let me begin by defining the artistry of communication. "An artist sees something others cannot see, and presents it in a manner in which they can see it." sometimes written as the following: "An artist sees something others cannot see, and (re)presents it in a manner in which they can see it." "An artist is a person who sees something others cannot see, and who (re)presents it in a manner in which they can see it." *** For thousands of year paper has been a monopoly for information, at least for those of us of such modest means that we should not find it feasible to build something concrete to be our medium of distributing our messages. Now that paper is no longer required and an entire 300 page book can be mailed first class for one stamp by putting it on a 1.44M floppy disk, or sent via ftp, we are seeing those who monopolize the paper media react to this "loss of power" on their part. Of course, it isn't so much a "loss" of power on their part as gain of power on the part of millions of other people. To the person who only measures themselves in comparison, it may be an apparent loss of power. . . but only in comparison to the monopoly they used to have, not in comparison to the absolute power, in which everyone is gaining-- thus eliminating some of the Big Frogs In Small Ponds by gaining for the entire population what used to be monopolized by a few. Here is an example: Until less than a decade ago the only way to publish millions of words was to spend huge amounts of money on huge amounts of that paper medium which has ruled our communications for millennia. Less than ten years ago you probably saw your first Compact Disk around 15 years after you saw your first Compact Cassette [audio tape format]. Today it costs someone like you are me only $1 to make copies of a billion characters of information; [$1 per copy includes jewel box case and shipping, but does not included what is called "mastering" which is now down to $500, but "mastering" can also be done locally if you are willing to spend a week]. So, what happens when the average person can put a gigabyte on a CD for a buck? Some people spend more than a buck apiece for the business cards they hand you [see Winning Through Intimidation]. Think what it will be like when someone can just hand you 1,000 books worth of information for the same price. The people who were used to monopolizing publication of a nature such as this were few and far between, and they decided what was going to be published in such large contents and distributions. The same was true of those who "ran" discussions. Robert's Rules of Order is obsolete in a discussion where all of the people can talk at the same time. . .so "Power of the Gavel" is also becoming a thing of the past. . .even though those which are more properly called "listowners" than "moderators" are most vociferous in trying to maintain the "Power of the Gavel" in the presence of a medium which requires no gavel. Why am I referring to so many Limits on Virtual Culture? Because there is no Virtual Limit to what can be done in Virtual Cultures. . .but there are socially imposed limitations, most of a power-mongering nature, by those who insist on pounding gavels for their own power-mongering satisfaction. Let me elucidate: What happens to the value of something when everyone can have it in abundance? "Value" now becomes worthy of definition: To the person who believes in the Power of Limitation, the value is lost when the limitations are overcome. To the person who believes in Unlimited Distribution of Power, a limitation of power reduced the value because fewer people would be able to partake. Shakespeare, for example: is the value of Shakespeare going far in the positive or negative direction when everyone can have the Complete Works of Shakespeare? Those Shakespeare scholars who believe in getting Shakespeare to the people will think that the value of Shakespeare increases. Those Shakespeare scholars who believe in keeping Shakespeare to themselves will think that the value of Shakespeare decreases. Simple. . .no? Why would a Shakespeare professor want to keep Shakespeare as an intensely private domain? Some people think that if they are an exclusive possessor of a piece of anything, that the value of it goes up. . .like the value of a rare penny or a rare stamp. Remember the story about the man who spent a million dollars for the only other copy of a rare stamp he owned? When it arrives a few days later, the butler brings it in on a silver tray and the zillionaire picks up the stamp and lights his cigar with it. The butler asks "Why did you do that, sir?" The zillionaire replies: "A minute ago I owned two stamps worth a million dollars apiece because they were the only two on Earth . . .now I own one stamp worth five million dollars because that stamp is the ONLY one on Earth. The point is that in a Virtual Culture it is possible for any of us to have a copy of anything anyone else has. For the first time in history there is enough to go around. "This will eventually go down in history as the "Neo-Industrial" Revolution, which will change things as much or more than what a revolution in Mass Production did a couple hundred years ago. "NeoMass Production" is to Mass Production as Mass Production is to hand made production. . .there just isn't any comparison. I am sure you can't imagine all the things around you being made by hand. . .it would cost millions and billions and trillions of dollars for anyone to buy the things in the average US household today, if these things had to be made by hand, and many of these daily items, such as your television and VCR, could not be made, at ANY expense, and the standards of living of quadrillionaires, if such could exist, would still be far below the average today, simply because the things they would buy with their thousands of trillions would not be available at any price. The simplest of all these "NeoMass Products" is the Etext. At least it is when the high-up-muckety-mucks don't get a hand, or a foot, into it. This article is being distributed free of charge mostly because it is possible, not because it is a commercially paid for item, such as what you see on television. In the future, things will be given away free that were worth a whole life time of labor a few hundred years ago. Case in point: you are all aware of the Gideons' Bible that is freely available around the world. Before Gutenberg's time the price of the average book was equal to the price of the average farm. . .and even the most fanatical religious zealots were not apt to be giving them away, especially by the millions. *** Now that I have undoubtedly upset a large number of "listowners" and "scholars": let me go on to make a couple of comments about ejournals, and this one in particular, along with other lists in which the number of lines is said to be important. Part of the instructions for this article are that it be under a thousand lines in length. Of course, as members of the Virtual Culture, we are aware of an electronic fact that the size of a file is not determined by the number of LINES it has, but by the number of CHARACTERS. By the way, I inadvertently broke another rule, in that margins, in this case, are supposed to be under 60 characters, and I made them all the length of the first line I wrote, which was 64. If your copy of this article does not have all the lines the length of every other line [other than orphans] then you will know this file has been "massaged" and remember what Marshall McLuhan says about "The Medium is the Massage." You will be able to find this article, "ejvc1.art" in "articles" under /etext via anonymous ftp to mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu, if these changes are important to avoid. *** Several Definitions and Concepts About the "Virtual Culture" Virtual Culture is probably best defined for this context as the culture springing up among people who have not met in person but rather through email; including Discussion Groups, Listserver or otherwise oriented; UseNet and other network postings, and, also Internet Relay Chat [IRC=real time or live virtual discussions]. IRC, being a real time experience, probably grows and changes in faster fashions than the others, but to a more limited audience, in that things said on IRC are rarely copied down for posterity, as are UseNet email postings, which can be purchased for $35, or so per year, on CDROM. IRC therefore has less continuity, is quite ephemeral, and draws a crowd that is quite satisfied with this kind of interaction. However, on the other end of these spectrums, there are a larger number of specific conferences for a specific purpose of getting these ephemerally connected people together in person, something that is not very common among the discussions with more of those features which connote and denote continuity. On the other end of ephemerality spectrum, there are e-journals, such as this one, which attempt [successfully on a more and more widely based foundation] to create a permanent record of actions and words, sometimes even to the point of becoming a print-based journal in addition to being available in etext. In the middle, and composing the majority, are Discussion Groups on a variety of subjects, heading off in the direction of 10,000 such groups in the near future. These groups are sometimes freely posted to by any and every one who wants to send a message [including misplaced subscription or unsubscription commands] and sometimes "moderated" or "owned" by a moderator or listowner. I recommend you be wary of those whom are described with the "listowner" moniker, as they tend to be a bit more on the Feudal Lord side of things than they appear on a more moderate side of things. True moderators are sensitive, to the directions and methods of their membership, and to the facts that they cannot control the discussion without destroying it in certain ways. Others are such power-players that they eliminate anyone who is willing to stand up to them by taking on different points of view or different topics, especially if the difference is more desireable to the membership. These listowners are more interested in maintaining their power over the list than in that power provided by the list to the membership. They often end up being Big Frogs In A Small Pond, because the membership finds an email list somewhere else or makes one of their own. Being "Big Frogs in a Small Pond" is a possible subject for further dates. Interaction is quite different on these variants of the e-media. On one extreme anything goes, and on the other, the most stuffy, if you will pardon the expression, of the e-journals were likely to be even more stuffy than their paper counterparts, intentions being to insure they were to be taken seriously, which also will relate to the migration of some e-journals to paper. However, one thing nearly all these media have in common, is the "one-way" nature of their communications [the greatest exception being IRC, of course]. In most of these cases the conversation is monopolized by a few, statistically a VERY few, of the members. Even lists with those advertised memberships in the five figure range still have great portions of their conversation coming from a very small cadre or oligarchy, and sometimes they resent anyone else taking part. A second case of Big Frogs In A Small Pond. However, before all these frogs come after me, let me point out, with extreme intensity, that most of the members of a list don't want to say anything! In most discussion groups 99% of the people would prefer just to read the comments of others more or less like reading any media, in which replies are not a large part of the process even though they might be terribly important. I wonder if we have be "conditioned" to this "feature" of media, and now that this very medium that brings information to readers is the same medium that can carry the return message, we rarely, if ever, take advantage of this potential for conversation. Why? One reason is our terrible fear of making fools out of ourselves in front of a crowd. . .and the virtual crowd seems to count for this purpose as much or more than a physical crowd. Thus we come to some of the major biases of Virtual Culture: Keep it short and sweet! Every guide to the Virtual Culture has the same obligatory parts warning each and every potential writer of an email posting to: 1. Don't offend anybody. 2. Keep your message short. 3. Write as though your words would appear on the front page of the most prestigious newspaper you know. Of course, if you kept to these rules, then you would never have been able to say anything, which is pretty much what they want. Another of the major biases of Virtual Culture: Do It Right The First Time or We Will Embarrass You To All! Of course, the major effect of this major bias is to keep anyone from saying anything, other than those who were already saying a majority of what was said in the previous media. This is an historic trend, visible in the ways monopolists in an assortment of occupations in an assortment of times, and places. Those of you who read "Animal Farm" by George Orwell might see a parallel to Napoleon's ridicule and then takeover of the plans. Those who had a monopoly on natural gas for lighting and heating were among the first to condemn and then monopolize electricity, as were those who ran horse powered transportation took over the automobile transportation; take a close look at the licence on a limousine and you will see it marked "livery" or abbreviated LY. This dates back a hundred years when "livery stables" were homes for taxis which were drawn by "live" horse power. The same will be true of the very term for Virtual Culture, this "network" we use to communicate. Of course "network" originally meant something that was worked together to form a "net" such as a fishing net. When wires are eliminated altogether the network will still be called the network, and we will probably still use the network in ways that are reflective of the ways we used such previously available media. *** I have used only 500 lines of the 1,000 alloted to these columns because I want your feedback about the subjects you want to hear more about [more of that "oral" tradition in that we still "hear words" even when they are written down as commented up by Lemke, in the first article present in the journal three months ago]. I have already written material in further depth on most of this material introduced here, and it is yours for the asking. ===================================================== | The trend of library policy is clearly toward | the ideal of making all information available | without delay to all people. | |The Software Toolworks Illustrated Encyclopedia (TM) |(c) 1990, 1991 Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc. ============================================= Michael S. Hart, Professor of Electronic Text Executive Director of Project Gutenberg Etext Illinois Benedictine College, Lisle, IL 60532 No official connection to U of Illinois--UIUC hart @uiucvmd.bitnet or hart@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu hart @uiucvmd.bitnet or hart@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu COPYRIGHT 1993 PROF. MICHAEL S. HART, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THIS MESSAGE MAY NOT BE COPIED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION *OTHER THAN TO REPLY TO THE AUTHOR OR TO THIS EMAIL LIST* PERMISSION EASILY AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST TO THIS ADDRESS. _____ Articles and Sections of this issue of the _Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture_ may be retrieved via anonymous ftp to byrd.mu.wvnet.edu or via e-mail message addressed to LISTSERV@KENTVM or LISTSERV@KENTVM.KENT.EDU (instructions below) Papers may be submitted at anytime by email or send/file to: Ermel Stepp - Editor-in-Chief, _Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture_ M034050@MARSHALL.WVNET.EDU _________________________________ *Copyright Declaration* Copyright of articles published by Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture is held by the author of a given article. If an article is re-published elsewhere it must include a statement that it was originally published by Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture. _________________________________ _THE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL ON VIRTUAL CULTURE_ EDITORIAL BORAD EJVC Founders/Arachnet Moderators Ermel Stepp, Marshall University, Editor-in-Chief M034050@Marshall.wvnet.edu Diane (Di) Kovacs, Kent State University, Co-Editor DKOVACS@Kentvm.Kent.edu A. Ralph Papakhian, Indiana University, Consulting Editor PAPAKHI@@IUBVM Editor, _The Cyberspace Monitor_ Algirdas Pakstas, The University of Trondheim, Norway Algirdas.Pakstas@idt.unit.no Editors, _Virtual Square_ Diane (Di) Kovacs, Kent State University, Co-Editor DKOVACS@Kentvm.Kent.edu James Shimabukuro, University of Hawaii jamess@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Consulting Editors Anne Balsamo, Georgia Institute of Technology ab45@prism.gatech.edu Patrick (Pat) Conner, West Virginia University u47c2@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU Skip Coppola, Applied Technology, Inc. skip%aptech@bagend.atl.ga.us Cynthia J. Fuchs, George Mason University cfuchs@gmuvax.bitnet Stevan Harnad, Princeton University harnad@Princeton.EDU Edward M. (Ted) Jennings, University at Albany, SUNY EMJ69@ALBNYVMS Michael Joyce, Vassar MIJOYCE@vaxsar.vassar.edu or USERTFSG@UMICHUM Jay Lemke, City University of New York JLLBC@CUNYVM.BITNET Carl Eugene Loeffler, Carnegie Mellon University cel+@andrew.cmu.edu Willard McCarty, University of Toronto editor@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA James (Jim) Milles, Saint Louis University millesjg@sluvca.slu.edu Algirdas Pakstas, The University of Trondheim, Norway Algirdas.Pakstas@idt.unit.no A. Ralph Papakhian, Indiana University PAPAKHI@@IUBVM Bernie Sloan, University of Illinois, Champaign AXPBBGS@UICVMC.BITNET or b-sloan@uiuc.edu Allucquere Roseanne Stone, University of Texas, Austin success@emc.cc.utexas.edu Kali Tal, Viet Nam Generation kali@access.digex.com Associate Editors Robert J. (Bob) Beebe, Youngstown State University ad219@yfn.ysu.edu David W. Brown, Ball State University 01dwbrown@LEO.BSUVC.BSU.EDU Kathleen Burnett, Rutgers University BURNET@zodiac.rutgers.edu G. 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Rosenberg, University of Kentucky MROSE01@UKCC.uky.edu Laverna Saunders, University of Nevada, Las Vegas saunders@nevada.edu David Sewell, University of Rochester dsew@TROI.CC.ROCHESTER.EDU James Shimabukuro, University of Hawaii jamess@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu Christinger (Chris) Tomer, University of Pittsburgh ctomer@vms.cis.pitt.edu or ctomer+@pitt.edu Stuart Weibel, OCLC stu@oclc.org Bob Zenhausern, St. Johns University drz@sjuvm.stjohns.edu or drz@sjuvm.bitnet ____________________________ Anonymous FTP Instructions ____________________________ ftp byrd.mu.wvnet.edu login anonymous password: users' electronic address cd /pub/ejvc type EJVC.INDEX.FTP get filename (where filename = exact name of file in INDEX) quit LISTSERV Retrieval Instructions _______________________________ Send e-mail addressed to LISTSERV@KENTVM (Bitnet) or LISTSERV@KENTVM.KENT.EDU Leave the subject line empty. 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