Yeah, I'd say there was more trust, and reputation meant something. Careers were made and broken on Usenet and over email, and bad behavior could be effectively

Yeah, I'd say there was more trust, and reputation meant something. Careers were made and broken on Usenet and over email, and bad behavior could be effectively frowned on and nipped in the bud, usually. I used to write essays about how much I admired RMS, and his idealistic vision of libre software, free like the air we breathe. Of course, I wanted free software because I was not rich, and software was expensive, so of course I preferred it! There was a famous mailing list in those days, "com-priv" where all the thought leaders discussed the ramifications, and the process for implementing, a transition from R&E, government-subsidized, to commercial and privatized Internet. I was dropped smack-dab into the middle of that revolution, and I truly felt both sides of it. The Internet, as conceived as an audacious techno-mage DARPA project, and then rolled out to academia, was absolutely fascinating and 100% culturally distinct from the Internet we have today. But the Internet today needs funding, it needs support, and it needs to be under regulation, and so we got the one we really deserve, I suppose.