The CAMC web site.
Some rough vocab definitions you might need:
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Internet, I will give you a quick overview. The Internet is basically a way of connection one computer to another. There are thousands upon thousands of computers already hooked up to this "data highway," each capable of communicating with the others in a matter of moments. Amongst other activities, people use the Internet to send personal mail messages, as well as to read what are known as "newsgroups." These are the electronic equivalent of a round table discussion, where pretty much anyone can discuss what is on their mind.
The Corporations Ate My Cat Mailing List: This list has a history shrouded in mist. The original idea for it grew from a thread on one of the cyberpunk netnews groups, the title of which was "Corporations Ate My Cat" (duh). Topics discussed in the group seem, on the face of it, to be such things as self sufficiency, fear of the government, responsible use of technology, logistics involved in any and all of the above and nifty reading on appropriate topics.
Mailing to the List: To send mail which will get resent to everyone on the list (including yourself -- the mailing software I am using is pretty simplistic), address your mail to: camc@monad.com
Subscriptions: If you would like to be added to the list, removed from the list, or know of someone else who might like to be added or removed, send mail to me at: camc-request@monad.com
There already exists a large infrastructure of computers, and equipment to connect them to one another. This allows anyone who can use one of these computers to talk to anyone else using them. Think about that for a moment: I can (and do) send electronic mail to my friend from high school who is currently living and working in London, England. It generally takes less than an hour for what I send off to him to show up on his screen.
This electronic mail system is quick and easy, and is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Internet. You can transfer much more than just simple text around -- graphic images, sounds, whatever can be represented digitally are constantly being zinged around the globe, through leased telephone lines, along microwave links, up to and off of satellites, and then on into machines waiting to suck up as much information as possible. Unfortunately, with this plethora of data come some problems. In particular, since ninety per cent of anything is crap, one finds oneself virtually drowning in the relentless noise of the computer network. It takes a lot of effort and concentration to weed out the uninteresting or the irrelevant, and a lot of restraint not to just try and read everything (some of us have far too many interests and end up skipping almost all of the discussions because of the time required to digest).
Consider a concert hall filled with people where everyone is jabbering away to anyone who will listen. Say you find a group of people who are talking about something you find very interesting and thought provoking. Unfortunately, this discussion keeps getting interrupted as other people wander by, talking loudly about something else, or as contributors to the thread get jostled by the masses. If you were smart, you'd herd your little collection of people out the doors to the parking lot, where you could sit around and comfortably discuss what was on your mind without being interrupted all of the time.
An electronic mailing list is something akin to this parking lot discussion. After seeing bits and pieces of a discussion on one of the netnews groups, I decided that a mailing list might allow those involved to be heard more clearly. So, I formed the CAMC list...
As mentioned already, some of the topics discussed on the list: