7.0425 More on Humanist & Advertising (4/183)

Elaine Brennan (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Tue, 18 Jan 1994 10:21:30 EST

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 7, No. 0425. Tuesday, 18 Jan 1994.


(1) Date: Mon, 17 Jan 94 18:14 EST (19 lines)
From: "Tom Benson 814-865-4201" <T3B@PSUVM>
Subject: Re: 7.0419 Humanist & Advertising: Question & Comments

(2) Date: Mon, 17 Jan 1994 19:35:08 -0500 (EST) (56 lines)
From: mccarty@epas.utoronto.ca (W. McCarty)
Subject: academic good vs. commercial evil?

(3) Date: Mon, 17 Jan 94 17:31:59 PST (13 lines)
From: cbf@athena.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber)
Subject: Re: 7.0419 Humanist & Advertising: Question & Comments

(4) Date: Mon, 17 Jan 94 20:59:39 CST (95 lines)
From: "Mark Olsen" <mvo2@MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU>
Subject: Re: ads

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 94 18:14 EST
From: "Tom Benson 814-865-4201" <T3B@PSUVM>
Subject: Re: 7.0419 Humanist & Advertising: Question & Comments (4/129)

I agree with Ken Laws and George Lang that occasional
quasi-commercial uses of HUMANIST and other network lists
is useful and should be continued, on a case by case basis.
I, for one, am happy to hear about new books and new software
that are useful to my work and to my students.

Is a product announcement, or a book announcement, different,
in principle, from the announcement of a new journal, a call
for papers for a conference, the announcement of a conference,
or a call for manuscripts for books and journals? The line seems
fuzzy to me, and in principle as well as practice,
I'd prefer to allow more rather than less communication.

Tom Benson
Penn State
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------74----
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 1994 19:35:08 -0500 (EST)
From: mccarty@epas.utoronto.ca (W. McCarty)
Subject: academic good vs. commercial evil?

The history of Humanist has been one of crises and delights,
interspersed with enough plain tedium to keep its members from
suffering core-meltdown. It seems now that we have arrived at one of
the occasional crises at which much is revealed about who we are,
what we want, and what opportunities the medium presents to us.

Each crisis on Humanist that I can remember almost immediately brought
up the question of what Humanist was for, that is, what we wanted it
to be for. At each turn in the road -- and this road started turning
almost immediately after the thing was started -- there was much
gnashing of teeth and groaning about corrupting compromise, loss of
original spirit, and so forth. (I won't for one minute fool myself
into thinking that there have not been Good Old Days, for I can
remember many of them myself, but we do have to be careful not to
mistake any and all change as bad, yes?) Perhaps it's been too long
since Humanist has had a real crisis. Things are getting too settled.
But enough old timer's talk, and on to fanning the flames.

Ken Laws and George Lang, with their points about "good net
citizenship" and "truth in labelling", have both indicated a heart of
the matter: that the opposition of academic to commercial is a
distraction from the more interesting and telling problem of decorum.
James Johnston, proprietor of WordCruncher, indicates with his
decorous though lengthy note a problem the anti-commercialist's stance
creates for us all. Good work is done outside the academy, sometimes
by giant corporations, sometimes by very small businesses that somehow
have to keep going. (The rough history of Nota Bene is relevant here
also.) I for one am glad to hear from Mr. Johnston, whose product has
not only been influential in the development of untainted, academic
software but has itself contributed to some very important scholarship.
It seems to me that we cannot afford to be kept ignorant of what small
software companies are doing. Again, decorum is the issue, and this
puts the ball into the editor's court. If I may offer a blunt
observation, Humanist is NOT analogous to one's postbox nor to one's
telephone. If it becomes so, then I will be leaving by the nearest
window.

I seem to remember a penetrating invitation we might keep in mind
while discussing the sins of the commercial world: to anyone without
taint to cast the first stone. I mean, really, is there a source of
clean money somewhere, or are the only real differences how it gets
into the bank and whether the flow of it is guaranteed or not? The
issue as I see it is to continue to build a productive community by
discovering the ways of behaving that will make it work.


WM
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Willard McCarty / Centre for Computing in the Humanities
University of Toronto / mccarty@epas.utoronto.ca
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

(3) --------------------------------------------------------------22----
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 94 17:31:59 PST
From: cbf@athena.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber)
Subject: Re: 7.0419 Humanist & Advertising: Question & Comments (4/129)

I think that notices about WordCruncher should be perfectly
permissable on HUMANIST, just as notices about the MLA's
publication of TACT would be.

Humanist computing is what we are here for. We need to know about
commercial products that make our life easier.

Charles Faulhaber
UC Berkeley
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------113---
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 94 20:59:39 CST
From: "Mark Olsen" <mvo2@MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU>
Subject: Re: ads


I'm surprised to see so much consternation over advertising on
this list and HUMANIST. A recent issue of _UNIX World_ was devoted
to the Internet and the potential profit that companies may
derive from network services/products/advertising. I don't know
how many of SHARP (or HUMANIST) members have been looking at the World
Wide Web -- a global multi-media hyper-text protocol/environment, but there
are **many** commercial and non-academic concerns beginning to
assert a presence on the network. On of my favorite journals,
_Mother Jones_ has gone to full electronic publication:

http://www.mojones.com/motherjones.html

(This is a WWW address. Many journals are being published with
graphics under WWW and the Mosaic series of clients)

A look at the Mosaic "What's New Page" found at:

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/whats-new.html

indicates the range of commercial interests already here:

Wavefront Technologies Santa Barbara, CA now has a WWW
server running. Wavefront is the leader in professional
workstation-based 3D animation software. The server offers
information on products, customer training, support, production
profiles, and much more!

Lego bricks! Maybe you remember them from your youth,
maybe you've started using your children as an excuse to buy
more, maybe you just enjoy building things with them. If you
do, check out this archive of Lego information including the
FAQ for rec.toys.lego (nee alt.toys.lego), information on
building your own lego robot, and variety of gif images.

The S-Cubed Division of Maxwell Labs, a high technology
research and development organization announces it's World
Wide Web server. In addition to providing information about
Maxwell products and services, as a public service we're
providing Taxing Times 1994, an Internet collection of
tax-related resources and information to help you deal with
April 15th.

The DTP Direct Catalog is now online as part of the InterNex
Server Bureau. DTP Direct specializes in Macintosh hardware
and software tools for desktop publishers. The World Wide
Web implementation of this catalog features offerings from
Adobe, Seagate, Fujitsu and Aldus, along with other quality
solutions for the graphics professional.

The Company Corporation (TCC) - Incorporate easily, quickly
and inexpensively in any state online. TCC is the #1 direct
incorporator in the world and has formed over 100,000
corporations.

And this is only the last couple of **days**. The debate over
whether the Internet should be non-commercial is passe', precisely
because the technology has developed to a point where commercial
interests can see the potential for profit. This is not an
un-mixed blessing, but it does have the advantage of making the
Internet a source for considerably better and well supported
information. Some of this information is of direct interest
to researchers, such as vendor support for numerous hardware
platforms and software systems, such as:

Quarterdeck Office Systems, Inc now has a Web server. It is
running under MS-DOS and DESQview/X. Of interest:
QEMM technotes; ports to DESQview/X (including Mosaic
2.1).

Novell has added some nice new utilities and services on their
Web server. Now you can run a wais search on the news using
the archive of Novell-related Newsgroups. Another new utility
is a form for submitting UnixWare Product Enhancement
requests. This form is routed to the UnixWare product
managers so users can tell Novell what they'd like to see in
future versions of UnixWare.

The debate concerning the commercialization of the Internet
needs to be conducted with a realization that 1) commerce is
already on the Internet and 2) there are as many benefits as
pitfalls to this commercialization.

And finally, I'd be remise if I did not plug my own ARTFL Project,
a non-profit research outfit for French studies holding 2,000
French texts :-)

http://tuna.uchicago.edu/ARTFL.html

Mark Olsen
University of Chicago