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DACS
members who read the Danbury
News-Times may be familiar with a full-page Online
section which appears at the back of each Tuesday edition. This
section has been devoted to
information on computers and the Internet, and gets much of its
content from the Chicago
Tribune and other syndicated sources. Beginning on March 3, the
News-Times will revamp its
editorial structure, move the high-tech page to Wednesday's section
B-1, and add locally
generated content to its features. And part of that local content
will be a weekly column hosted by
DACS.
The Q&A column will be researched
and written by a team from DACS under the supervision of
News-Times business editor, Mark Langlois, and will be modeled
on the longstanding Random
Access column published each month in dacs.doc. DACS chairman,
Wally David, will head up a
select team of experts, including Bruce Preston, Ed Heere, and
Jeff Setaro, and with informed
input from other volunteers within our society. The News-Times
has begun promoting the column
and will ask its readers to send in questions. Anyone who would
like to add their expertise to
the effort should contact Wally at wallydavid@myself.com,
or pull him aside at a DACS meeting.
We on the board are all excited by this opportunity to share
DACS' communal knowledge with
the News-Times' readership, and look forward to adding many new
members through this column.
We encourage our members to support this effort of the News-Times
to add local content to their
pages and to provide timely and relevant information to their
readers.
People helping people
The initiative with the News-Times underscores a primary commitment
of DACS people helping
people. Why do user groups matter? Perhaps a brief allegory can
explain:
As the digital primordial soup began
to coalesce into conglomerations resembling desktop
computers, user groups were spawned to help bring some sense
to the chaos. Then, as larger,
more complex, artificial life forms began to take shape, these
early PCs began to be taken over by
parasitic infestations which gave them the means to explain themselves,
perform more tasks, and
communicate more clearly. Some even became so powerful that they
began to gobble up one
another, thus obviating the need to even explain themselves.
With PCs taking on more and more
tasks which seemed to need no explanation, user groups began
to lose their role as intermediaries. But then these super PCs,
and the infestations that inhabited them, developed the ability
to reproduce and change their form and function virtually at
will. Having eliminated most competing artificial life forms,
they no longer needed to learn new tasks, and left it to others
to explain what it was they did. To understand is to control,
but even when confronted with knowledge and experience, these
digital leviathans and their silicon-based hosts were able to
transform themselves anew into slightly different and ever more
complex variations of themselves, defying efforts to comprehend
them.
Thus the user group became a permanent
institution, dedicated to spreading information and
understanding of the ever changing PC. This was accomplished
through HelpLines, which allowed
members to call one another to discuss specific problems; SIGs, which met to discuss the
latest
changes in computing; and Random
Access, which enabled them to share knowledge with the
general membership. In sum, all this led to fulfillment of the
ancient prophecies: "Ask , and it shall
be given," and "a manual shall come to thee!"
--Allan Ostergren
dacsprez@aol.com |
President's
Message
