> Here is the long promised article.
> On how incivility has destroyed Usenet :
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> March
2007http://discovermagazine.com/2007/mar/jarons-world-internet-and-the-wa...
> Jaron's World: Sex, Drugs, and the Internet
> Does anonymity breed nastiness in the online world?
> by Jaron Lanier
>
> Allow me to advance a radical thesis: Today's outbreaks of nasty online behavior are directly linked to the history of the
> counterculture in America, and in particular to the war on drugs.
>
> In order to build a bridge over what might at first seem like a huge distance, I'll need to go over some background. It is widely
> perceived that the problem of uncivil conduct online has reached epidemic proportions. Michael Kinsley, a pioneer of confrontational
> political debate on cable television, recently wrote in Slate, "When you write for the Web, you open yourself up to breathtakingly
> vicious vitriol. People wish things on your mother, simply for bearing you, that you wouldn't wish on Hitler." David Pogue echoed
> this sentiment in The New York Times: "The deeper we sail into the new online world of communications, the sadder I get about its
> future. . . . What's really stunning is how hostile ordinary people are to each other online these days."
>
> But it's not true that people are universally nasty online. Behavior actually varies considerably from site to site. There are many ...
