[HN Gopher] Fall of the Berlin Wall on Usenet (1989) ___________________________________________________________________ Fall of the Berlin Wall on Usenet (1989) Author : nixass Score : 117 points Date : 2023-05-14 13:01 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (groups.google.com) (TXT) w3m dump (groups.google.com) | doe88 wrote: | The twitter of its time (minus Elon)! | NoZebra120vClip wrote: | > The twitter of its time (minus Elon)! | | No, but we had B1FF D00DZ1!!1 | macintux wrote: | And Serdar Argic. | layer8 wrote: | More like the Reddit of its time. | antod wrote: | I often think of it the other way round, ie Reddit is the | usenet of its time. | [deleted] | mathgeek wrote: | Not particularly. The masses were neither on nor aware of | Usenet and thus it never had the cultural real-time impact on | society that modern popular services do. It was mostly "early" | tech folks and academics chatting with each other. | macintux wrote: | There were glimmers. The Babylon 5 group had an impact on | both the audience and the show itself, for example, with JMS | actively participating. | anthk wrote: | More like Slashdot. | [deleted] | mjmsmith wrote: | Plus federation. Like Algol, an improvement on its successors. | dhosek wrote: | My favorite Berlin Wall story was a friend of mine wrote an | opinion piece for the college newspaper in the fall of 1989 | talking about the moves towards democracy in the Warsaw Pact | nations which concluded with the line, "but don't expect the | Berlin Wall to come down any time soon." | | He submitted the piece at the beginning of November. The paper | came out on November 13th. | huijzer wrote: | Similar funny story. There was a Dutch historian who announced | that Putin would never attack Ukraine full scale and he did | this the night before the invasion. | | (Apart from that, I still respect the historian. He might not | be the best, but he is a good storyteller.) | S_Pineapple wrote: | Do you happen to know the name of said historian? I am | curious to read what his specific reasoning was! | macintux wrote: | I recently rediscovered a paper I wrote in 1987-88, my senior | year in high school, about a united Europe. My timing wasn't | quite as exquisite as your friend's, but unsurprisingly I too | failed to see what would happen so soon. | | Tiananmen Square felt like reality crushing what briefly seemed | like an end to a dark period of history. | CPLX wrote: | Predicting things is hard. I was standing on West Street in | lower Manhattan looking up at the World Trade Center on fire, | on a cell phone with my mother, and said "well it doesn't look | like it's going to fall down or anything." | hutzlibu wrote: | "My favorite Berlin Wall story was a friend of mine wrote an | opinion piece for the college newspaper in the fall of 1989 | talking about the moves towards democracy in the Warsaw Pact | nations which concluded with the line, "but don't expect the | Berlin Wall to come down any time soon." | | He submitted the piece at the beginning of November. The paper | came out on November 13th. " | | Nobody really suspected that the wall would totally come down | the way it did, as far as I know. (And I know a bit, because I | was there when the demonstrations started, even though I could | barely talk at that time) | | Tiananmen square massacre in china just happened before and | even though russia itself was opening up - east germany was | still under tight control of Stalinists, who would have rather | shot everyone, than giving up. This was the general sentiment. | | So there were lots of demonstrations before and slight optimism | that some opening up could be achieved and some democratic | reforms could be done, but till the very end, the fear was very | real (and warranted) that it all could turn into a bloodbath | any moment. | | Luckily, it didn't. | | For many reasons obviously, but mainly it was that the people | in power were way weaker, than everyone believed. You cannot | just have people shot, you need soldiers or police doing it. | And when enough of those soldiers or police have relatives who | joined the demonstrations - then they will eventually refuse. | And the usual fall back plan, to use russian troops in this | case, was no option anymore as Gorbatschow made clear | internally. | | One anecdote I know, is that a friend of my family, a fireman, | was ordered to use his fire truck against demonstrators. And he | refused, saying a fire truck is only for real fire. A brave | move, as he also had family and dissent was dangerous (and he | would have suffered, if it would have all turned out | different). I suspect many such small or bigger | insubordinations happened, making the power base of the party | finally crumble and then the wall crumbled down as a very | visible signal of their weakness and then history happened. | jonhohle wrote: | What's nice about Usenet (and maybe a reason to being something | similar back, is that Mastadon?) is the replicated public | archives of this snapshot of history. The thread earlier this | week highlighted that DJB and Werner Vogels were on early sockets | conversations debating the merits over STREAMS or Sun RPC. | There's a durability that doesn't exist with so many independent | BBS that are constantly shutting down, taking decades of | conversations and information with them. | antiterra wrote: | There's a lot of idiotic stuff I posted as a grade school kid | too that I am super happy isn't readily available. | jgilias wrote: | And now there's Discord. I really wish less stuff happened on | it. | HeckFeck wrote: | I've seen too many game mod and open source projects choose | to centre their community upon Discord. Whilst convenient, it | does not bode well for posterity. | highwaylights wrote: | I really wish I'd been around at this time of the net finding its | feet. | | The 90's kind of feel like the glory days in retrospect to me, | but I get how I was one of the Eternal September arrivals for a | whole bunch of people that felt _that_ was the end of the heyday. | | Reading through the thread it's a real shame to see the decline | in our ability (willingness?) to have civil and thoughtful | discourse. I honestly might just spend the evening crawling | through 30+ year old usenet threads just to see what | conversations people were having casually back then. | super256 wrote: | > Reading through the thread it's a real shame to see the | decline in our ability (willingness?) to have civil and | thoughtful discourse. | | If you can read German, I recommend reading the usenet threads | of Kim Dotcom (Megaupload founder). They will show you the | opposite of thoughtful discourse. :D | | https://www.babsi.de/KIMBLE.txt | netsharc wrote: | His email was @aol.com, ha, typical... | | I remember seeing his website in the olden times, where he | put up pics of cars and parties from Monaco/Cote d'Azur. And | when the NZ police raided him on behest of the FBI, it seems | he got actual hero status. It makes me wonder if crime does | pay after all... | bboygravity wrote: | Crime? | ghaff wrote: | This highlights some wisdom from this Salon article: | https://www.salon.com/2002/01/08/saving_usenet/ | | To a first approximation _no one_ cares about bugs in some | ancient SunOS version lost to history on Usenet. They care about | the societal discussions that took place at the time. But a lot | of people thought the former was documentation and the latter | ephemera. | subarctic wrote: | One of the comments, by someone named Stewart Tansley: | | > Personally, I miss the objectivism debates - Come back Magnus, | all is forgiven! | | Is this a reference to Magnus Pym, the main character in A | Perfect Spy by John le Carre? | hinkley wrote: | What's so amazing about the fall of the wall is how bureaucratic | the announcement was meant to be (we have agreed to dismantle the | wall, but we don't have a plan to enact yet). But everyone showed | up with amateur or actual construction equipment and started | tearing it to pieces. | | The wall more or less went up overnight, it's no wonder people | wanted it down just as fast. | hannob wrote: | The story is a bit more complex than that. Gunter Schabowski, | who announced the "new travel law" as they called it, only got | a note right before a press conference and wasn't properly | briefed. He was then asked when that'll happen, and he said | something along the lines of "according to my knowledge | immediately", which was interpreted as "we can go there right | now, tonight", but which wasn't what was planned. | | This eventually led to a situation where thousands of people | were standing at the border, wanting to cross, and eventually | the border guards saw no other option than to let them pass. | layer8 wrote: | Yep, history might have turned out quite differently if | Schabowski had refrained from answering with what was just | his supposition. | varjag wrote: | Not too differently. East Germany was a goner at that point | in history. | lisasays wrote: | Its days were numbered -- but the system could have | easily come crashing down very violently, or remained | intact but with a massive crackdown (in fact the party | leadership was making explicit plans or the latter of | these -- "Day X", as they referred that eventuality -- | while a "Chinese Solution" was a tacitly acknowledged | outcome as well). And then plodded along for another 10 | years or so. That's why the events as they unfolded were | surprising. | lisasays wrote: | The famous announcement was in regard to permitting | unrestricted travel (for a supposedly limited time window). | Nothing was said about dismantling the wall (at the time or at | any point in the future). | | The "dismantling" itself (which at the outset was more like | vandalism and souvenir-grabbing) started happening | spontaneously after crowds began to overwhelm the border | crossing, and the ensuing carnival atmosphere took over. | hutzlibu wrote: | "vandalism" | | I am not sure "vandalism" is the right term, when it comes to | damaging a prison wall for a whole nation. | | It was a symbol of fear and oppression. People were shot at | the wall every year, so sure, not everyone (or maybe only a | few) who joined, were freedom fighters or deeply | philosophical about the meaning of what they were doing. But | it still was a liberating act, doing something that likely | would have got you shot, just the day before. No matter if | you would have tried it from the western or eastern side. | | (even though of course, it was more likely from the eastern | side, the western side was already full of graffiti, but | actually damaging the wall, also from the western side, would | have not been very dangerous. People did do this to help | people flee the east on purpose. And some of those helpers | did get shot.) | lisasays wrote: | I just meant the first "Wallpecker" blows were decidedly | small-scale -- and not part a plan to demolish the wall per | se. | [deleted] | em-bee wrote: | friends of mine took a VW bus and drove some 300km to help. i | wasn't in the country at the time, or else i probably would | have joined them. | nixass wrote: | Can you please expand on that help thing? Was it to move | people closer to border area? | em-bee wrote: | well, as the parent comment said: " _everyone showed up | with amateur or actual construction equipment and started | tearing it to pieces_ ", my friends took hammers, chisels | and maybe pickaxes, drove to berlin and started chipping | away at the wall. | | i don't know how many went, but a VW bus can seat a handful | of people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Type_2 | | pictures my friends made looked similar to this: | | https://external- | content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F... | | https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/business/2019/11/08 | /... | hannob wrote: | It should probably be said that tearing down the wall was | mainly a souvenir thing. People did this so they could | get their "piece of the Berlin wall", not to practically | tear down the wall to cross it. At the point these images | were taken you were already legally able to go to the | other side at normal border crossings. | [deleted] | em-bee wrote: | actually, i don't think so. there were not that many | official border crossings. remember the wall went right | through the city, and by right you should be able to | cross on every street corner. so i believe that people | were motivated to remove the wall to be able to cross | more easily. but also to remove the wall as a symbol of | the separation of the two parts of the city. at the time | i certainly felt the sentiment was to get rid of the | wall. i didn't see any boasting of souvenirs by my | friends later. | netsharc wrote: | It was a bureaucratic mistake in the messaging, although it's | not clear what the East Germans' actual plan was, it seems they | did want to open the border: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Berlin_Wall ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-05-14 23:00 UTC)