[HN Gopher] Fall of the Berlin Wall on Usenet (1989)
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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
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