Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site looking.UUCP 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