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Path: utzoo!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Why the net didn't die, or perhaps why it did
Message-ID: <216@looking.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 19-Jan-85 00:00:00 EST
Article-I.D.: looking.216
Posted: Sat Jan 19 00:00:00 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Jan-85 21:10:40 EST
Organization: Looking Glass Software, Waterloo, Ont
Lines: 21

You will all recall various discussions over the past few years about
the soon-to-come death of the net under its own weight.

So the question now becomes, why didn't this happen?

The answer is that the net has reached a kind of equilibrium.
As net traffic has gotten heavier and noisier, more and more people
are leaving it, or reading far less.  So now the more people the net
attracts, the more people it scares away.  So in a sense, perhaps for
many the net has already died, as predicted.

I joined the net almost 4 years ago, and then everybody read everything.
Now I only read a small subset of groups, and I say "n" to about 80% of
the articles in groups I do read.  I can't afford to spend time on articles
that include the text of other articles, or don't have descriptive subjects.
Sometimes if I enter a group and I see too any articles waiting, I just
skip the whole group.  The more I have to read the less I want to read it.

I am not alone.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473