Well Friends, it looks like the inevitable has happened. CW is down for the count and I don't think it will be back up before the final bell rings. Fortunately Ms. Shiva has started up this lovely mail list for all of the CW'ers so that we can stay in touch with one another. It's not quite the same I will concede, but something is better than nothing. As I write this, I believe that ondine/lyn may be making a phone call to CW about the tres.wired.net server - but I'm not holding my breath on their doing anything about it since that server doesnt actually exist anymore.
At the moment, several of us are logged in to SpaceBar, but its not quite the same i guess. Maybe the time has come to say goodbye to our chatroom and move on to greener pastures. Actually, it doesn't come as much of a surprise to me that they have pulled the plug on our beloved chatroom. I don't know how much disk space it was taking up but I have a feeling that someone discovered it and decided that since there was no activity on the server that they would disconnect it from the outside world. (side note: as soon as I got Raul's post, I ran a traceroute and ping on the server - tres.wired.net still exists but I can't get logged in to it - receive a brief conect then disconnect - can't even get to a login prompt - which is more than i get from chat.hotwired.com 2428 - i get a connection refused error in my telnet program).
I stop and think about all the people i have met on CW and those of you whom I have met in real life and I realize what a wonderful thing technology can be, but, and here I may be borrowing a bit from aussiedawn (omigawd!!) but without capital - that server wont run. Since Pike is no more at HotWired, I dont't think we will be getting our chatroom back. As I was saying before reality reared its ugly head with matter-of-fact points about money, I think of all the people I have met on CW, those whom I have met IRL or talked on the phone with, those whom I have argued with and hope never to see again, as well as those whom I hope to see someday. People from around the world, a list to long to enumerate. To quote Jim Morrison:
I love the friends I have gathered together on this thin raft
We have constructed pyramids in honor of our escaping
This is the land where the Pharaoh died.
The first time I came into CW nigh on 2 years ago, the first people I met were andimaniac, myfuneral and one of andi's friends at loughborough. It was a crazy time but a lot of fun. I think of the friendships made and broken. I guess its a true that the virtual community that we created on CW mirrored on that could just as easily have been created in real life. One of the things that I enjoyed was that we all had one tiny thing in common: we all know how to use a computer - to some extent or another. Oddly enough, I am reading a book by Howard Rheingold called Virtual Communities which describes the virtual communities at the WELL, it applies to CW just as well.
I hope that somehow by hook or by crook, we can construct our own community again on the net. As janbrady wrote "...this is cool and all but it's just not the same!" and it isnt. A lot of the spontaneity is gone, something is missing on which I cannot quite put my finger. Hmmm.
In real life, I am not one who does very well at interacting with others, not socially at least, but CW has helped me a great deal, sort of my own form of perverse therapy or something. If thats what it is, then it is infinitly cheaper than seeing shrink and paying 70 bucks an hour to straighten my head out, and definitly better than Xantex, Prozac, or Ridelin.
Well, I guess I have gone on long enough. Time for me to step down and let someone else pick up the eulogy, since I guess that's what this has become. If you would like to add to this, by all means. In the next few days, I may make this available on a webpage, complete with a bulletin board, or something like that. Have to see if the server I use is letting my CGI's go thru or not. Anyhow, take care and I hope to see you all either on the net, or face to face someday.
The Following was posted to the Threads at Hotwired.
Well, it appears that telechat is dead and/or dying.
Or is it? First it was Club Wired (the old club), then Vrave, then it Spacebar. Although the 'Bar now has a new home at superdeluxe.com. Perhaps even IRC will drop by the wayside as will all the old telnet based MUD's, MOO's, and Talker's. Why? Maybe its because newer programs for Win95/8 with slicker prettier interfaces and a nice familiar GUI. Personally, I prefer the telnet since it gives me a place to go even when I cannot run a GUI interface to the internet (hey it happens). But theres more than that.
Call me an elitist but I like the friends I have made on CW and gone over to Spacebar with, perhaps we tend to be electro-techheads - some may even say geeks but I prefer that to dealing with the bored housewives and adolescents that one runs into on other chat platforms, but that is not to say there is not a mix on Spacebar. The vravers, the wired-heads and the spacebarians all get along fairly well for the most part. We laugh we cry we hate. Sometimes the signal to noise ratio gets too high and we have to run for a quiet corner (the one advantage to IRC I have found). I've done my share of chatting in other places and as Dorothy found, there's no place like home. I've done the MOO/MUD bit, not my thing too little interaction for my taste (oddly enough). I've tried talker's but couldn't get comfortable. IRC was too much noise and not enough signal (like being in the midst of a frat party or something). I tried the JavaChat here at HotWired, I tried PowWow, even got majorly sucked into it, but when I finally returned, found where I belonged, so to speak.
But an interface does not a chat make, its the people. Whether you enjoy the chaos of IRC or AOhell to the quiet insanity of Spacebar, theres a place for everyone and everyone in there place. So, without much more ado, I end the clichés with the following:
So long it's been good t'know ya."
-- Woody Guthrie, 1912-1967
Yours,
nimdokk, aka david