http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=664981


in reply to Stephen Fry doesn't have the brain power for Perl

The man may not be bothered to learn perl ('cause I'm sure he could manage it if he wanted to) but his comment on social networking sites vis-à-vis AOL and other old, closed and guarded on-line systems is spot on, in my opinion:
(...) what an irony! For what is this much-trumpeted social networking but an escape back into that world of the closed online service of 15 or 20 years ago? Is it part of some deep human instinct that we take an organism as open and wild and free as the internet, and wish then to divide it into citadels, into closed-border republics and independent city states? The systole and diastole of history has us opening and closing like a flower: escaping our fortresses and enclosures into the open fields, and then building hedges, villages and cities in which to imprison ourselves again before repeating the process once more. The internet seems to be following this pattern.