I know fanboy gushing isn't really productive. But I'd just like to say that it's so awesome to live in a time when we can start a topic of conversation about someone of note, and there's a chance that this individual will join the conversation personally.
I remember once upon a time WAAAAY back in the mid-90s I think, when I was having a problem with my Voodoo2 graphics driver and Quake.
I posted the problem on one of the Newsgroups at the time and got my reply back from John Carmack himself (which naturally fixed the problem pretty quickly.)
I remember being extremely excited then, as I'm sure the questioner is now on SO.
I too had a similar experience. Asked a question about cron in a newsgroup and got a response from Vixie. It was a small world then, perhaps it will be again as the SNR gets better.
I pinged John on Twitter with a link to elicit an answer. I have to agree with you, having this proximity and immediacy through things like Twitter, Stack Overflow and services like HN is quite exciting. Just a few years ago this would have been almost unheard of (exceptions always prove the rule).
A few years ago (eek a decade) when a lot of the tech community hung out on slashdot and I remember seeing this same thing happen. We are social creatures and before tweeting (I know shocking) there was other ways and there will be new ways when no one tweets anymore.
Back in the day they had a finger up on some random id Software server. They were just as present back then as they are now, it's just that the people without knowledge of usenet and Unix can interact with them :)
This can cut both ways. One time I said something vaguely insulting (and in retrospect, insensitive) about Steve Wozniak on Slashdot, and he replied to the comment personally.
You never know who is reading, so don't say anything you couldn't vouch for in real life (which increasingly overlaps with our Internet life)
I did this on twitter once with Mike Masnick of techdirt. He certainly didn't follow me, must have a search with his name setup. Of all the situations to raise the ire of someone even moderately internet famous it was possibly one of the most petty too - and his response was way more mature than my call...oops.
This is precisely the reason why I keep up with Quora. I've seen so many individuals of note from the industry answering questions on it and it really gives a nice one-degree of separation kind of perspective. It's kind of cool to know that I could ask a question on a topic like data science and someone like Jeff Hammerbacher could reply directly.
one of the few things slashdot is still occasionally good at. (pity so few of the stories are interesting enough to actually bring out the interesting people anymore.)
>* But I'd just like to say that it's so awesome to live in a time when we can start a topic of conversation about someone of note, and there's a chance that this individual will join the conversation personally.*
Which is not unlike how it was when communities where constrained in population. E.g. in ancient Athens for example you could have --if you lived at the right point in time and weren't a slave-- a conversation with the greatest minds of the era, from Socrates to Plato, to mathematicians etc...
>if you lived at the right point in time and weren't a slave
You've just excluded the majority of Athenians[1]. If you generalize "slave" to "bottom Nth percentile of the population, the conditions are much better now than they were before. While someone low on the social pyramid in ancient Greece probably had no chance of contacting someone like Plato, many more people in modern times would be able to write a letter (or email, tweet, forum post, etc) to someone famous and actually receive a response.
[1] "According to the Ancient Greek historian Thucydides, the Athenian citizens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (5th century BC) numbered 40,000, making with their families a total of 140,000 people in all. The metics, i.e. those who did not have citizen rights and paid for the right to reside in Athens, numbered a further 70,000, whilst slaves were estimated at between 150,000 to 400,000.[7] Hence, approximately a tenth of the population were adult male citizens, eligible to meet and vote in the Assembly and be elected to office." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Athens#Geographical_...
>The contentious question is: for every Aristotle in the top 10%, how many were in the bottom 90% that were denied that possible future by force?
And the even more contentious question is: how many are in the same place today? Lack of money when growing up and circumstance can be equally as brute as force to deny someone his "possible future" as anything else. How many readers does HN have that are San Francisco natives and how many that are, say, from Mississippi or Alabama combined?
With ~2 million people in jail, some million homeless and several tens of millions eating with coups and soul kitchens, one of basic differences now is that we have the luxury (hypocrisy?) to blame them instead of some institution like slavery.
And then after starting an ill advised war that one argued against, convict him of sedition and have him poisoned. So... Where does Fox News fit into this model?
