Flutterby™! : scrounging

Over at Sgt Stryker's Daily Briefing, there's a note by Joe Comer titled Who needs commercial stuff when scroungers rule. It's worth reading on several levels, from a "the street finds its own uses..." to why large systems often have trouble moving quickly and acquiring the right technology to a recounting of a different time and place than we live in now, when telephone calls home from the war in Korea could cost a soldier a month's paycheck, and do-it-yourself networks were a key to getting all sorts of perks. But this note struck me:

God bless one man, not with us any more: Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) had about the best ham station on earth. And he had volunteers to staff it. On holidays, he would place our calls for free, and everybody got to call home without the expense of a collect call. Now, that was a man who cared about the GI's. And everybody in the service at the time knew it.

Let's flash back, say, 15 years. At that point a Fido Technology Network might have been a reasonable way to help a soldier stationed overseas make contact with loved ones at home. How many Senators do you think knew such a network even existed? I'm sure if I stretch I can come up with examples later, although all of them will be poor analogies, but... well... there are a lot of social changes tied up in the changes between that paragraph and now, some on a personal level, some on a worldwide technological level, and if you ever catch me spewing bullshit about "the good old days", the feeling that one person can make a difference by pursuing their hobby is most of what I want to evoke.