Re: ASCII text files

[BILL MITCHELL <ECWFM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear pkt

i sent a message this morning in reply to Allin about technology. I stand
wholly by that message. it is a retrograde step to do things in old
technologies especially when ascii, for example, is limited and time consuming.

but i should have added a paragraph - which comes after riding a 100 kms in
training. my mind is clearer as my body works!

i realise that technology diffuses slowly. We are privileged in academe to have
the access to the forefront of the information revolution. some universities
will be ahead of others (eg. Paul doesn't even have gopher yet), and some
individuals within unis will be ahead or behind what is available.

some people on pkt are not even in academe and are disadvantaged that way. i
have admiration for JJG in this regard who despite his views is really  getting
to grips with the information technology from what i gather is his retirement
house.

so what i said was not intended to be elitist. Here is a plan. we should form a
self selected technology group within the pkt collective. It could be arranged
geographically to take into account our regional dispersion. We can then invite
the non-technological group to self nominate. any time we have a instance where
some technological constraint is holding up back from unity we merely invoke a
resource transfer operation.

the tech group post or fax to the non-tech group (after appropriate allocation
of responsibilities) the required documents. I am happy to add my name and a
bit of time to help out. i have know idea of the proportions involved but it
would useful to find out to see whether it is practical.

Plan part 2 - i am starting to sound like JJG himself (:-))

often the constraint is knowledge rather than hardware. So i think we could
also have training in technology sessions within the pkt collective - a bit
along the lines of the excellent primer ric and gary and don sent out on
ftp'ing into csf.colorado. again i would be happy to help out in drawing up a
How to do things Primer which would overcome the knowledge constraint.

Plan 1 and Plan 2 mean to me that we stay at the frontier but don't leave the
others behind. Information is power so they say, so this way we can all share
it at the same level. i also think it befits my socialistic and
non-entrepreneurial leanings - notice no fee for service mentioned.

kind regards
bill
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 William F. Mitchell            Telephone: +61-49-215027      .-_|\
 Department of Economics                   +61-49-705133     /     \    about
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 Callaghan   NSW  2308                                            v
 Australia                      Email : ecwfm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 World Wide Web Home Page: http://econ-www.newcastle.edu.au/~bill/billyhp.html
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