I really appreciated Douglas Winship's post because it raises an
issue that, I believe, is essential: the relationship of technology
and the purpose that technology serves.  I assume that this list
(the listowner's forum) exists primarily to help members with technical
difficulties, however it also offers the opportunity to consider the
broader implications of what we are doing and to ask ourselves whether
certain things that *can* be done, *should* in fact be done. Technology
may be value free but the human beings who use the technology should
keep in mind that ultimately we are accountable for the uses to which
we put technology.  When I read the initial post concerning the
140,000 member list (it's not "listserv"--but that's another issue
on which I tend to fixate, the issue of proper use of language :-)),
I found myself shuddering, not because I considered it technically
impossible but because it seemed humanely unwise.  Then, of course,
I stopped myself and reminded myself that I am using the topics feature
fairly successfully in ways it was not intended to be used and that
therefore there was no reason to use the listserv program to do
things it wasn't originally intended to do which I presumed was to
facilitate dialogue among individuals of shared interest.  So, why
not set up a list simply to send notices to 140k people, or six
billion, for that matter?  But since the number of subscribers would
make two way communication dangerous, in the sense of flooding
people's mailboxes, I then wondered whether using listserv (or another
such program) would be responsible use of technology.  Much better,
in this case, would be simply to send out one's information to
members of an emailing list.
 
I few months ago I briefly subscribed to web audit, a web-site counter
service.  Someone there made the mistake of sending billing notices
to individuals out over some listserv list.  When I received a bill
not intended for me I quite innocently, not realizing what was going
on, sent a note back, informing them that this was a mistake. When
I came home about seven hours later I had over a thousand new
messages in my mailbox. The ones I read were from irate strangers
from all over the world asking me to stop sending them my junkmail.
There were also all sorts of messages from people who had done what
I had done.  I felt like the sorcerer's apprentice unable to stop
the flood, though I did send one more message to the crazy billing
list, asking people to respond to NOTHING from that address since it
clearly was some sort of jumbo mail distribution list with potential
for exponential growth . . .  I still shudder when I remember that
period (the angry mail kept coming for days).
 
Regards,
 
Ingrid Shafer
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http://astro.temple.edu/~arcc
http://192.146.206.5/www/faculty/shaferi/index.html