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New Kids on the Net:
Deutschsprachige Philosophie elektronisch

Herbert Hrachovec

The old, albeit hackneyed, computer expression “GIGO”—
Garbage In, Garbage Out—has been removed from vocabu-
lary and rhetoric at a time when it seems most needed. The
hype about the Internet has in fact created a new enchant-
ment in Western societies. Dealing with the realities of “vir-
tual reality,” however, will be a process of progressive
disenchantment wherein the limits of communication and
information as the essence of emancipation become clear.
The Net, then, has attained a status much like God . . . be-
fore rationalisation.
—Interrogate the Internet

The Internet protocols offer several modes of global, digital data
transfer by procedures like telnet, ftp (File Transfer Protocol) or
1
SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). Some modes are designed to
enable exchange of information between single users or to allow ac-
cess to remote operating systems. There are, on the other hand, a
number of techniques specifically developed to support social inter-
action: “Chats” (Internet Relay Channels) or “MUDs” (Multi-User
Dimensions). Mailing lists fall somewhere in between those two cat-
egories, basically building on the person-to-person SMTP, but en-
hancing it (often by extensive use of mail aliases) to establish
electronic discussion groups. Discourse on such lists is generally
more civil and substantive than on Usenet, but still considerably
more chaotic than any traditional form of written public exchange.
While chatters may open or close new “channels” at will and partic-
ipants in Usenet’s alt-hierarchy indulge in their freedom to create
and discard any number of quixotic newsgroups, list-owners need

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