There is sense in this. In ancient times, to hack one had to be where the iron was. This resulted in clumps of people with shared interests who had to be somewhat social to maximize the hacking. Given a vaguely even gender split, there was even "traditional social interaction" available - one had to pass the time waiting for the card deck/printout back or for a terminal to open up.
Once computing became personal, the need for such grouping declined. It wasn't because the PC's were more powerful, as they weren't. They were merely more convenient, nobody controlled access, nobody chewed your ass when they crashed, etc. Whatever social skills which were maintained with F2F and limited resources atrophied as neither situations remained. There was also less of a need to maintain a real persona as it was harder to spot posers or assholes at 300 baud.
Thus, if anybody was into the social aspect of computing, or reveled in multi-person/large projects, the shift to microprocessors was a horrible thing. Until the FOSS movement reappeared, there was little such people could gain from the network. They could take their skills off to other areas where collaboration was (still) the norm and get a better buzz.
What was left was those who wanted to bend the iron to their will, and to do it solo. If UUNet had followed closely this might have been delayed long enough for multi person projects to be multi-site, but they had to think it up first. And man, were phone rates high before MCI.
While we've gained from the output of high-skill people who were uncomfortable in groups (they can be rock stars), we've lost the glue that held the community together. For me, there were 10-20 people who I saw every time I hacked. And usually there were 2-3 of them I was working with (Life, Chess, whatever). Read Levy's Hackers then compare it to Wargames, as they capture the feel of the two communities (at least in my mind).
tl;dr, maybe, but I would have preferred the network to have proceeded the mips/mflops...
"The share of women in computer science started falling at roughly the same moment when personal computers started showing up in U.S. homes in significant numbers."
Once computing became personal, the need for such grouping declined. It wasn't because the PC's were more powerful, as they weren't. They were merely more convenient, nobody controlled access, nobody chewed your ass when they crashed, etc. Whatever social skills which were maintained with F2F and limited resources atrophied as neither situations remained. There was also less of a need to maintain a real persona as it was harder to spot posers or assholes at 300 baud.
Thus, if anybody was into the social aspect of computing, or reveled in multi-person/large projects, the shift to microprocessors was a horrible thing. Until the FOSS movement reappeared, there was little such people could gain from the network. They could take their skills off to other areas where collaboration was (still) the norm and get a better buzz.
What was left was those who wanted to bend the iron to their will, and to do it solo. If UUNet had followed closely this might have been delayed long enough for multi person projects to be multi-site, but they had to think it up first. And man, were phone rates high before MCI.
While we've gained from the output of high-skill people who were uncomfortable in groups (they can be rock stars), we've lost the glue that held the community together. For me, there were 10-20 people who I saw every time I hacked. And usually there were 2-3 of them I was working with (Life, Chess, whatever). Read Levy's Hackers then compare it to Wargames, as they capture the feel of the two communities (at least in my mind).
tl;dr, maybe, but I would have preferred the network to have proceeded the mips/mflops...