From: vagans@foreshadower.net   
      
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   Towards the end of 2009, some of the regulars from the 2nd    
   altcp generation came back and had a Christmas party at the    
   Rancho. Aparently the 3rd altcp gen came to an end in 2006    
   or thereabouts, and a 4th generation did not appear, and by    
   2009, the newsgroup was no longer active.   
      
   The altcp 'generations' does not refer to the age of the    
   posters, but to the timeframe they posted in. 1986-1993 is    
   the timeframe of the 1st generation, from the newgrouping to    
   the argument over Billy Idol in '93, which Shawn Wilbur    
   wrote up in "Running Down The Meme: Cyberpunk,    
   alt.cyberpunk, and the Panic of ¡93".   
      
   I had been on The Well bbs where there was a cyberpunk    
   group. The Well also had a usenet feed and I could read    
   alt.cyberpunk. When I realized I was reading altcp rather    
   than the bbs, I found a local isp and dropped The Well. Up    
   to then I wasn't interested in participating and so lurked    
   off and on for a few years, but I had formed an attachment    
   to altcp which I still don't understand beyond an obvious    
   interest in cyberpunk.   
      
   About the same time:   
      
   Interdisciplinary Dialogue within the   
   Global Network Environment   
      
   by Heath Michael Rezabek University of Northern Iowa for    
   the15th Annual Conference of the Association for Integrative    
   Studies Wayne State University, Detroit, MI October 7-10    
   1993   
      
   Rez didn't mention altcp.   
      
   This moment became known as Eternal September, defined as    
   "All time since September 1993", referring to the moment    
   usenet became "trendy" -- when AOL got a newsfeed and    
   unleashed the migration into usenet of the clueless.   
      
   I got pushed out of lurking and into the fray because I    
   could sense a problem within altcp and usenet, both of which    
   I liked a lot.  Early in 1994, Nesta and I had some email    
   about it (Nesta, then, was mostly Bruce Arthu Bendler). We    
   kinda agreed to poke about and see what's what.   
      
   The result was the creation of the 2nd generation. We began    
   by cleaning house.   
      
      
   --    
     (__)    Sourcerer   
    /(<>)\ O|O|O|O||O||O   
     \../  |OO|||O|||O||   Mirroring the shadows of futurity   
      ||   OO|||OO||O||O   since 1993   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)