Perhaps millions of great ideas and billions of pieces of knowledge have been lost to the almost entirely ethereal IRC as well. The somewhat permanent nature of

Perhaps millions of great ideas and billions of pieces of knowledge have been lost to the almost entirely ethereal IRC as well. The somewhat permanent nature of Usenet and, to a lesser degree, mailing lists, subliminally changes the nature of the conversation. I feel like we lose some of the ultimate benefits of "real" protocols by using the web as a means for two-way communications, but we also gain a platform for experimentation and rapid prototyping that leads to things like Hacker News.