Why alt.fan.john-c-dvorak exists, and who I am

The man

John C. Dvorak wrote about personal computing for more than forty years. His columns ran in PC Magazine, InfoWorld, Forbes, MacUser, MarketWatch, and a dozen other places. He hosted television and radio, wrote and co-wrote books, and from 2007 to 2026 he co-hosted the No Agenda podcast. For nineteen years of that show he was the anchor, the dad, the husband, the stalwart: the voice doing the grounding, the correcting, the refusing to be impressed.

He was born on April 5, 1946. He died on July 20, 2026. The alt.fan hierarchy holds groups for the writers and broadcasters of his era, and his name is missing from it. This group repairs that absence. It is a posthumous honor, and it is long, long overdue, which is the worst kind of overdue there is.

Why a newsgroup

Because a memorial to John should not have a landlord. Everything else built for the dead now sits on a platform that can sunset it, bury it under an algorithm, or sell the building out from under it. A Usenet newsgroup runs the other way. It is unmoderated and unowned. Nobody controls it, nobody can sell it, and nobody can switch it off. It lives on servers run by strangers who peer with each other out of conviction, in plain text, and it will hold his name in the hierarchy for as long as Usenet runs. So far that is forty-five years and counting.

Yes, there will be haters. There were haters in every comment section John ever had, and he outlasted them all by the simple method of continuing. The group asks for the same congregation he always had: people who come looking, and stay to argue.

Where it stands

The proposal went to alt.config on November 11, 2026. Discussion runs roughly two weeks. After that I send the newgroup control message, and the group exists on every server that honors it.

Olly olly oxen free. Read the thread in alt.config and say your piece while the discussion runs. Get a Usenet account; Eternal September is free. Ask your provider to carry alt.fan.john-c-dvorak. And when the group opens, come post: one memory, the column that changed your mind, the prediction that came embarrassingly true. If you disagreed with him every week for nineteen years, you are especially welcome. He would have insisted on it.

Who I am

My name is Chris Abraham. I live in Arlington, Virginia, and in this matter I am one thing: a listener. I found No Agenda at episode one, listening from a flat in Berlin, and I stayed for all nineteen years. I am still mourning John. Nineteen years of a voice in your earbuds is its own kind of family, and grief does not ask permission.

I gave to the show the way producers do, past the thousand-dollar mark where the show makes a Knight of the No Agenda Roundtable, and on episode 568, on November 24, 2013, I was knighted on the air: Sir Chris of Kalaepohaku, named for the ground by my old school in Honolulu. Whether I ever reached a title above Knight I do not know, and I never needed one. I never even ordered the ring.

I proposed this group, I wrote its charter, and I keep this site. Nobody appointed me; a newsgroup requires a proponent, not an appointment. Reach me at cja@well.com, an address I have had since 1996.