ZF Index

Editor:
David Edwards

Contributors:
Peter Gillin
Mat Page
Juliette White
Sarah Lawrence
Xavier Smith
Richard Blunt
Dale Klover
Paul Gilkerson
Phil Hallard
Matthew Graham

Put the kettle on, and make yourself some toast. Yes, it's time for the International Camel Biting Championships. So soon? Yes indeed! Actually, I'm lying. It's really a cunning article about the Internet...

The Information Superhighway: its effect on DougSoc

by Richard Blunt

[This is being written during a lecture on the chemistry of penicillin. I have lost track totally because the lecturer is inaudible and his diagrams are illegible. And this lecture is being given the day after an evening spent failing to understand quantum chemistry (also known as "banging your head against a brick wall for fun and profit"). Hence, anything that follows is entirely the fault of Jack Baldwin (Waynflete Professor of Chemistry) and Peter Atkins (lecturer in Physical Chemistry, Lincoln College).]

In the old days (i.e. before October 1994) life was simple. Men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real... [cut out the irrelevant comments - Ed] We had a termcard at the start of every, well, term, and a message on a Wednesday night or Thursday morning reminding us of what we already knew. This was done using that wonderful and remarkable service run by the University, pigeon post. And that was the entire relationship members had with Dougsoc outside of the actual meetings, except for occasional communications between committee members. And now... Well, the entire committee is now "on line" as the saying goes and we are constantly available for your comments and opinions using the wonderful facility of e-mail. But that's just the start...

I gained my first access to the Internet in Michaelmas '93 via the late lamented "black". For you new users, black was sable's predecessor (logical, eh?) as the standard undergraduate server. It did much the same things, except it was incredibly slow, had much less memory and used couldn't cope with more than a few people logged on at the same time. On the other hand, it used to crash in the same entertaining, infuriating and random way that sable does, and it would allow you to have a password that you could actually remember instead of a random sequence of letters and numbers. I got my access for one reason - I wanted to have e-mail facilities. At first I used it for the usual, important thins, like communicating with my tutorial partner to find out if I could copy his work, and gossiping with friends at other universities about X going out with Y while bonking Z on the side, that sort of thing. However, in my flush of excitement at leaving the slip road of the information superhighway I released my e-mail address to several Dougsoc members. This was a Bad Mistake. The trouble started with Dan's "Xavierpost". For all you newcomers again, this was a "service" that involved Dan sending anything that he had downloaded off various Internet sites and found vaguely funny to about 100 people on his list. Such delights included several Monty Python scripts, which managed to overfill the memory allocation for my mailbox and got me a ticking-off from the Computing Centre. Luckily this year Dan (or should I say "Xavier") is bored with this.

As a replacement... well, all of you who are plugged in to the Net will know exactly what is coming next. We've had communications involving dodgy photos, personal insults from "friends" of society members who have no idea about the people they're writing to, daytime television (and radio), Mr. Blobby... ('nuff said)... and even the publicity notes which continue a fine tradition and actually justify committee members having a list of members' e-mail addresses. This is a Good Idea, owing to the to the saving in postal fees (thus spaketh the Treasurer :-) ). This is now supplemented by alt.dougsoc, our very own newsgroup, to which we can post the sort of rubbish that would get us certified if we were to say it in mixed company. I still haven't got the hang of reading and contributing this "facility", which might be wise in the long run. The way things are going, it might become as notorious as alt.bestiality (no, I've never looked at it. Honestly. Or alt.sex.bondage either). And the whole world can read it! Still, we're also offering the much more civilised Dougsoc corner of the World Wide Web (or WWF to the bored) where you can find everything you need to know about us, and a whole lot more that you don't and don't desire to know.

What's really interesting about this whole set-up is, as usual, the people who get involved with it. I'm thinking of applying for a DPhil in sociology to study them. Personalities change totally when confronted by a keyboard, a VDU screen and nothing else. In a letter you have time to change your mind before you post it, so natural self-censorship makes it presentable to the recipient. In face-to-face conversation nervousness makes you hold your tongue before you say anything too silly (except after large quantities of alcohol). On the phone fear of the disembodied voice turning nasty keeps your words presentable. But when you have no human presence to relate to, when two keys send your message off with no hope of return should you regret it, then people go totally psycho. I can't believe some of the ramblings and insults that have been sent backwards and forwards by people who seem to be reasonable normal in the flesh. Pride of place must go to the conversation started by Colin concerning the inter-round games for the quiz, which reached a climax (?) with Sarah's contributions, setting a new standard in the philosophy of entertainment by being at right-angles to reality. "Talk" sessions - where what you type appears on the screen of the person you're connected to instantly - are great fun too. Here there's no opportunity at all for self-censorship - what you type, they read. You can even do it between more than two people... and I know a song about that.

I digress. As for other people on the Net, just read the contributions to alt.dougsoc by non-members. These are largely the sort of people you cross the road, nay, emigrate, to avoid. To be honest there are quite a few Internet freaks who you would not willingly engage in conversation should you meet them in the flesh. A mental image comes to mind... He (for 'it' is usually male) will point out the spelling mistakes in your last article on a newsgroup while ignoring his own horrendous grammar and worse spelling and punctuation and dismissing your brilliantly-reasoned point or hilarious well-constructed joke as "crap" or "bollocks" (he has an incredibly small English vocabulary but a gigantic knowledge of jargon in several areas). He signs his notes with a pointless pseudonym and inserts a bizarre, surreal or unfunny endpiece. And otherwise sane people respond to him, instead of hoping he gets bored and goes away! I suppose this is because you can't simply ignore someone of freeze him out - everyone shouts at the same volume in cyberspace.

The problem is, I'm starting on the slippery road to this state myself. I can now talk about "fingering" someone without sniggering. This is me, the computerphobe who was brought up on a ZX Spectrum and BBC Model B (when life was really simple and computers had Basic, not operating systems), who can't understand UNIX or MS-DOS and who bought an Apple macintosh because it's fluffy and friendly and never goes wibble and chucks you out with nothing but "> " as if to say "sort that one out, sucker". I can even get rugby songs off WWW! I'm hooked! Arrgh!

You see the problems of the Internet. For all you new users - beware. For those who haven't yet started - don't. And for all you "experienced" types - it's something else that turns you blind.

I am, forever yours,

Wile E. Coyote <richard.blunt@hertford.ox.ac.uk>
or The No. 6 (Mickey Skinner is God) Appreciation Society

[The editor (that's me) would like to point out that the opinions expressed in this article (or indeed any of the others) are not necessarily the same as his own. In fact, they differ in a number of ways, but I'm not going to tell you how. You'll just have to guess.

This gives me an ideal opporunity to plug (yet again) all the wonderful things out there on the net that DougSoc has its oar in. Firstly, of course, all the committee have e-mail accounts, so you can plague them with your messages as much as you want (particularly Richard who loves to have his inbox filled up with complete drivel). Secondly, DougSoc now has its very own account on Sable. I'm not sure what advantages this has for most of us (Paul gets a few extra megabytes to play around with, I suppose), but I'm sure that we'll find out some day...

Then there's the existance of alt.dougsoc, our very own newsgroup. Here you can post all the weird and wonderful messages that are dying to burst out of your overheating mind. Finally, there are DougSoc's very own World Wide Web pages. The URL for these is http://sable.ox.ac.uk/~dougsoc/. This is just a pure and simple ego trip for the committee, I'm sure, but it does actually contain some interesting information. You can browse the current term card, read Zarking Fardwarks back issues, and even view some flattering photos of various DougSoc members. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, we still don't have that lovely picture of Colin "Legs" Page up there...]

Maintained by David Edwards : david@mulch.demon.co.uk on behalf of DougSoc : dougsoc@sable.ox.ac.uk