Re: Jude Milhon in WIRED

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

Perry E. Metzger wrote:

> Sorry. Everyone seems to be assuring me that I should know her and
> that she's a longtime friend of Eric's, but I must admit that I've
> no memory of anything she's done. I believe people who say she's the
> origin of the term "cypherpunk", but I must admit to still having no
> real knowledge of who this person is.
> 
> In any case, I apologize for my ignorance and will try be on less of a
> hair trigger in the future. However, following a long stream of Wired
> interviews of bizarrely marginal community members, I simply assumed
> this was Yet Another.

And I apologize to Perry for not being even more elliptic in my
questioning of his language. It's jus that Jude is pretty well known
out here, at least by the group that was at the early meetings, and
so....

One thing I've found is that the electronic age has made me more
careful about insulting specific people. The Kibo Effect, call it.
(Hi, Kibo!) 

General insults, or political statements, are of course kosher, but
making any kind of snide remarks about Joe Foobar, for example, will
often result in these comments being fed to the at person. (I recently
made some comments here on this list about a public Net person, whom I
do not believe is or was subscribed...a few days later I got a
note from this person objecting to my characterization of his views! I
am assuming someone forwarded the traffic to him.)

So, if I see a "marginal" person interviewed by "Wired," I am
circumspect about commenting on them...they might be on the list, they
might actually be doing something important, etc. (Like that unknown
guy "Andreeson," or somesuch...I don't have any idea what he's done,
and I never heard of him before last year, but all the hype-zines are
putting him on their covers, so he must be doing something interesting
:).) 

Anyway, many of the folks "Wired" and the other hype-zines interview
are indeed strange and marginal. To be expected. There are only so
many of the standard "talking heads" that can be interviewed (the
stand-bys like Engelbart, Nelson, Toffler, Pournelle, etc.).

Frankly, I'd rather see a story on "Zippies," about which I'd heard
nothing substantive before, than Yet Another Ted Nelson Story, about
which I've heard entirely too much over the past decade. (Not to
insult Ted--Hi, Ted!--but there are only so many ways to tell the
Xanadu story...time for new approaches.)

I know some folks in the crypto/PGP community who were quite miffed
that such "marginal" folks as Eric Hughes, John Gilmore, and I were
featured on the cover of "Wired" 1.2 two years ago...they naturally
saw themselves as being more worthy, as perhaps they were....such is
life. The "credit assignment problem" in evolution and genetic
programming remains a tough one.

Finally, "Wired" is still mixing stories about flakes with seminal
articles, such as the one on "FinCEN" a while back. That makes it
still worth looking at, at least to me.


--Tim May


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