I remember being addicted to the local middle school's bulletin board system in eighth grade. I would stare at the COMit screen while I downloaded the coolest new DOOM levels. My best friend and I had horrible 14.4Kbps modems, so I would often store the levels on 1.44MB floppy disks and take them directly to his house. We didn't know then that what we were doing was called a sneakernet, but we could certainly appreciate its convenience. Recent rememberance of those days has inspired this idea.
I went to the local OfficeMax a few weeks ago to purchase a box of floppies. Knowing that I'd never use all 50 disks due to my vast hard drive space, I considered starting a sort of chain letter by leaving disks in random locations around town, such as gas station bathrooms and the library. On the disk I could place my personal philosophies and perhaps some innocuous bit of contact information, as well as instructions to pass on the disk after enjoying its contents and urging its discoverer to duplicate my experiment. I dreamt of my idea catching on and spreading across the country (until the usual crushing realization sank in). I have nonetheless gone forward with this plan and encourage you, the reader, to help me develop this idea. What follows are some things that must be established for this to succeed:
1. An abstract code of honor that will prevent intentionally malicious activity such as virus propagation and that can be easily understood and upheld by the common man.
2. An established standard for sharing information on these disks, such as a limit on the size of included graphics, textual document format, etc.
3. Some method of getting the public over its collective fear of the unknown.
Please help me flesh this idea out.