swatt (12/17/82)
As I was munching on my sandwich and reading the latest spate of opinions regarding the motorcycle helmet laws, and thinking about the cyclic character of discusssions (i.e. they always crop up again with new people), it suddenly struck me that we have here the electronic equivalent of a perpetual town meeting. It must have been something like this in the forums of ancient Greece. Here is the virtually unlimited opportunity to exchange opinions with anybody about anything. Isn't this the ideal of education? Isn't it precisely this ideal that gets short-changed in formal education environments (prerequisites, schedules, divisions, majors, etc.)? For all its problems, it seems that USENET provides an experience not otherwise available today. - Alan S. Watt