> The first example of relatively large-scale citizen journalism online was during the August 1991 coup attempt by eight high-level Soviet officials. There were

> The first example of relatively large-scale citizen journalism online was during the August 1991 coup attempt by eight high-level Soviet officials. There were two days of confrontation between demonstrators and troops, during which all Russian media except Usenet news groups were shut down by the authorities. Usenet, a precursor of today's Internet discussion forums, carried traffic into, out of and within Russia (70 cities) during the days of the coup attempt. [..] > "Don't worry, we're OK, though frightened and angry. Moscow is full of tanks and military machines, I hate them. They try to close all mass media, they shutted up CNN an hour ago, Soviet TV transmits opera and old movies. But, thanks Heaven, they don't consider RELCOM mass media or they simply forgot about it. Now we transmit information enough to put us in prison for the rest of our life :-). Hope all will turn out well at long last..." -- Polina Antonova http://cis471.blogspot.com/2011/01/before-twitter-revolutions-there-was.html http://cis471.blogspot.com/2011/01/before-twitter-revolution... I'm not happy how this is turning out, actually. Though I'm not thinking of just Russia, the situation is too pathetic across the board for anyone to point fingers at anyone. I'm not some kind of old school hacker either, I don't even get advanced math. But just as someone who was fascinated and inspired by "this stuff" since childhood, just by the stuff I saw in .readme files, I think this is true, even I can tell from the sidelines: the precious few ideals that made this all actually worthwhile, maybe noble even, were just quietly dropped by the wayside by too many, and subsequently not even encountered in the first place by even more. And that kinda breaks my heart.