"It is good to be a seeker, but sooner or later you have to be a finder, and then you must give what you have found as a gift for the world to enjoy."
-- Jonathon Livingston Seagull --

An Insider's View Of FutureC

excerpt from a FutureCulture post:

> refers to the "virtual community" that is fc. What do you call a
> community like the one in the English Department here that is "real" but
> "virtually dependent"?

 (to which i reply)

i've been thinking about this since you posted, and came up with a picture of how i see the 2 lists. it's all been said before, i'm sure, but it sounds right to me and i claim it as my own original idea ;)
 
walltowne


i see a flat topped hill on which is constructed a big blue box of a building, the Council for the Worldwide Distribution of Stuff (also known as Listserv). it is a clearinghouse of information. the top of the huge structure is riddled with pigeon holes, below the sorting hall is a cave-like basement.


at the bottom of the hill has formed a walled village of several hundred, mostly young, people (some of them work, others are supported by unknown sources). it's a nice place and the people who live there get to know each other, speak in passing, and so forth. but the real reason most of them live there is because of The Walltown Journal (a subsidiary of Listserv). the Journal publishes the Secrets of Success on screens built into the base of the hill. the townsfolk call them 'monitors' because they are always monitoring them for the next issue of the Secrets. they know that if they follow the path spelled out in the Secrets, they will find Success, and that's why they chose to move to Walltown in the first place.
above the town, there can often be seen carrier pigeons. Really Fast carrier pigeons. coming and going. at night, if the moon is full, you can even see Really Fast carrier bats! coming and going. some bats and pigeons do swoop down into Walltown, frightening the old and the very young, but mostly these carriers are moving information to a different community.

this other community is also made up of hundreds of people, but they are widely scattered over the earth,and aren't all that interested in hearing, or re-hearing, the Secrets of Success at the moment. this is a community of Seekers, and they seek all manner of things: apartments, microbrews, books, music, O/S's, kindred spirits, kind listeners, intelligent debate, free software, all manner of stuff. the Seekers are constantly looking about their surroundings for things that might be of interest to another Seeker, knowing that the others out there doing the same because (s)he is constantly receiving scraps of paper from the bats and pigeons. they call the paper scraps 'posts' because that's where they are dropped off. the last bat or pigeon is relieved when the next one reaches the post the Seeker has set up for this purpose, so there is always a carrier waiting if the Seeker finds something to share. some read the new Stuff as soon as the carrier arrives, since whatever day to day business they do is very close to a post anyway and they can hear the unique little 'ping' noise each new arrival makes. others wait until they quit seek/working for the day and read it all at once. some have questions, or comments about the new Stuff they read and they scribble it on the scrap of paper and send the bat or pigeon back with it. if they found something new that they want to share with the other Seekers, they sometimes want to start with a new 'thread' (slang for the scraps of paper that came with The Kit). sometimes they start a new thread just because the old one is so convoluted that there isn't room for what they want to say next.

a simple fact of life is that most Seekers are content to just look at the Stuff, and maybe collect it, gleaning whatever information is useful to them, and thinking and wondering about those 'posters' out there. these Seekers that just look are called "Lookers" (some Seekers who use intoxicants, work long hours, or live in exotic lands may slur it into "Lurkers"). the bats and pigeons like Lookers because they always have a lighter load heading back.

one way the Seekers are different from the Walltowners, is that they hardly ever see another Seeker. they go through their day to day business, seeking on the side, usually. thinking of what they can share. thinking about what others have shared. wondering how different and how alike their quest is to that of the other Seekers. some Seekers travel far, seeing and learning much, and may become so involved in seeking that they forget to share.
they may happen across a post years later, and try it out, just to see if it still works, and seem pleased that their fellow Seekers are still out there. Seeking and sharing.

alias datura

 

more writing?