James Kibo Parry

Before the web, citizens of the world used to have to make their own amusement, poking the campfire called Usenet. Kibo (kibo@world.std.com) was a particularly vocal member of the digerati, who gave the appearance of being omnipresent by immediately contributing to conversations which mentioned the k word anywhere on Usenet. (he did this by 'kiboizing' his news spool, ie running automated searches for his name, thus inventing the phenomenon later reinvented as 'egosurfing'). His contributions were never relevant (not that I remember) but were funny. Numerous newsgroups started up pro & anti kibo (eg alt.religion.kibology). His adherents then did things like spread the news virus (ah, nostalgia...) whose point was that you add a newsgroup to the list to cross post to and send it on - most of the outraged replies going to those dozens of newsgroups too.

Those who aren't familiar with Kibo's story might think that he is the alter-ego of James Parry, or that they were rumored to be two separate people. This was never the case, as Kibo has been posting to Usenet since 1988, and he has always used combinations of his real name and handle. Proof can be found on GoogleGroups.

He now has a website up at http://www.kibo.com/.

See also entry 2 in the Jargon File under KIBO: http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/K/KIBO.html.

Kibo was apparently originally convinced to start Kibology by MarkJasonDominus.

Oddly enough, the Japanese Experiment Module planned for ISS is named "Kibo": http://jem.tksc.nasda.go.jp/iss/doc09_e.html. -- StevenNewton

(Kibo is Japanese for hope, which I suppose goes well with names such as Mir and Freedom.)