Jumping on Vin or Richard or I is pointless Alan:

yes there is a clash of cultures alan, but I suspect it is hardly as clear
cut as you so dramatically suggest.  Most people want data to come to
them, not to go searching for it.  A minority (determined by actual
empirical analysis, not anecdote) is offended if anything comes to them
unbidden. 

These highly sensitive people and their doctrine USED TO dominate the net
in shear numbers, they no longer do so.  But this does not stop them from
trying to dominate the net by obnoxious bullying....but it is failing at
every juncture these days. As a proportion of total users, the
net-traditionalists are shrinking everyday. 

Lists have supplanted newsgroups in overall popularity. One must GO to a 
newsgroup, but the lists come to us....until we ask for them not to do 
so. Soon, browsers and email interfaces will be better integrated, and we 
will be able to link to url AND newsgroups that appear in mail. Then the 
functionality will be more complete for the email channel.  

For me, this evolutionary path has far more to do with convenence than any
type of sales issue.  You over-focus on the sales aspect, and miss the
overwhelming issue of plain old convenience.  We can request certain info
come to us, regularly, semiregularly, occasionally......without sales
as an issue ever arising.   

Ideally, a user should be able to set this delivery pattern up without
going to any web site.  The current web commerce models are still
incomplete.  Now, for folks such as yourself, it may be possible to set a
ID tag onto your email address, if you wish, which will facilitate
rejecting EVERYTHING that comes to you without explicit invitation, but
folks who feel this need are diminshing as a percent of total
users........I doubt they'll disappear, but.......in the US, they do not
seem to be at a critical mass necessary to exert political force. 

The net is not yet a mass culture, but is definitely headed in that 
direction, and as bandwidth grows, the character will alter even more 
quickly.

On Sun, 4 Feb 1996, Alan McConnell wrote:

> According to Richard Layman:
> > 
> > I think responding with verbiage about over-commerce wrt more consumer 
> > choice misses the point.  If you can't deliver, it's much harder to reach 
> > people.  Why?  Because people don't come to you.
> 	I believe I get your point, Mr Layman; it is: how can you
> 	sell to people if you aren't allowed to reach out and grab 'em.
> 	Now let me restate _my_ point, which is: I -- and millions of
> 	others like me -- don't want to be sold to on the Net!
> 
> 	Let me adumbrate: if you have a product to sell, by all means
> 	put up a web page, and pay as many search engines as you can
> 	afford to link to you.  When I want to buy, I'll dial up
> 	those search engines, and, if the link is done correctly, I'll
> 	find your web page, and maybe I'll place an order; maybe even
> 	I'll ask to be placed on your mailing list, asking you to
> 	send me announcements of your new products.  Although I'll
> 	think 5 or 6 times about doing this, until I can trust you
> 	to keep my Email address private.
> 
> I hope that you -- and others -- can recognize a Clash of Cultures here.
> You, and the culture you speak for, represent the Good Old Entrepreneurial
> Spirit That Made America Great.  I, and the culture I speak for, represents
> the Good Old Spirit of Freedom and Consumer Domination That Made America
> Great.  You have got the mails, the newspapers, most of the highways(thank
> God for Mrs LBJ!), and, now, the government.  I think you could leave
> the Internet to our side.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Alan McConnell
> 
> -- 
> Alan McConnell       Education cuts don't heal.
> Pixel Analysis       ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI.
> (alan@clark.net)     Linux!  The choice of a GNU generation.
> 
> 

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End of online-news-digest V1 #501
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