[1038] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Text of chron-nren
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joe Abernathy)
Mon Jul 22 19:12:27 1991
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 91 18:04:25 CDT
From: edtjda@magic322.chron.com (Joe Abernathy)
To: com-priv@psi.com
Houston Chronicle, July 22, 1991
Data superhighway
Congress maps changes in computer
use for homes, schools, and businesses
By Joe Abernathy Copyright 1991, Houston Chronicle
Lawmakers are enacting a five-year, $5 billion strategy to
build a futuristic data superhighway'' that promises fundamental
change for the way computers are used in business, classrooms and
the home.
A debate is raging over issues such as fair access and what
role the government should play in controlling this new medium.
But a broad coalition of leaders in business, research and
education believes that the nation is embarking on a course that
will revolutionize communications.
Supporters of the High Performance Computing Act of 1991, the
intellectual offspring of U.S. Sen. Al Gore, D-Tenn., say that it
will give the nation a new competitive edge. It is viewed as
enabling technology for the information age.
The bill, which was approved July 11 by the House but has not
been voted on by the Senate, only sets forth policy. Spending
authority was included in eight agency budgets for next year that
have been working their way through the approval process for
months. Actual appropriations are made separately.
If fully funded over the next five fiscal years, $4.8 billion
will be spent on the act, according to Chronicle
research.
This figure is $2-$3 billion higher than the most often cited
price tag on the program, but that price does not include planned
spending by the National Institutes of Health and the military, a
key sponsor of the technology. Congressional and other sources
conceded that the intent of the legislation is to increase
spending to a billion dollars a year, twice the current level.
If we're going to build an economy strong enough to grow in an
information age dominated by high technology and tough foreign
competitors, these are investments we must make now,'' Gore said
in a prepared statement. In every sector of our economy, from
finance to farming, these technologies could make a
difference.''
The money will go to an array of educational, research and
development activities in support of high-performance computing.
The heart of the matter, however, is the creation of a National
Research and Education Network (NREN), a high-performance network
of computer networks'' that will link millions of people in
unique ways only now being envisioned.
The NREN (pronounced en-ren) is expected to evolve from a
prototype research and education network called the Internet,
which already links some three million researchers, educators and
others around the world. Indeed, monthly Internet growth in
excess of 30 percent is cited as one proof that the high-capacity
NREN is needed.
Proponents say that the NREN will engender laboratories
without walls, new business possibilities, global electronic
mail, and interactive textbooks'' in which arcane mathematical
and scientific concepts spring visually to life.
The Internet serves to destroy barriers. In New York, museums,
kindergartens, supercomputer users, and high school counselors
for the Bronx coexist online. Parents may soon log on from home
to oversee homework assignments.
This fall, Texas will begin granting Internet access to the
kindergarten through 12th grade. Most Texas universities already
enjoy access.
But the network itself sometimes becomes an issue where young
people are concerned. Described by many of its users as an
anarchic democracy,'' the Internet is a new means of
communication that is raising a number of questions regarding
free speech, censorship, privacy and the broader role of the
government in creating and controlling the medium.
We've had a lot of problems here at Texas A&M with people
printing out fairly obscene (picture) files. And we've had people
printing really adult-oriented stories,'' said Richard Lee
Holbert, a computer educator in College Station. Can we stop that
or not stop that?'+i''
Any move to limit the nature of material transmitted across
the network is greeted by an outcry over what is perceived by the
scholarly community as censorship. School boards and parents, on
the other hand, see only that their children are being given
access to adult material.
During a recent discussion of the issue conducted on the
network, Richard Mandelbaum, director of the New York State
Education and Research Network, cited the complications of
protecting the administrators, computer specialists and teachers
who are introducing networking into the schools from being
destroyed by irate school boards and-or parents for allowing
pornography into the schools.'+i''
Other questions also loom large.
Holbert and other educators fear that the E' might be left
out of the NREN,'' unless efforts are made now to study their
needs.
A lobbying effort produced a last-minute change to the House
version of the computing act that would pay for such a study,
although no similar Senate provision yet exists.
We need libraries, we need computer time, we need more
networking,'' said Judith Tarrant, a Clear Lake High School
computer science instructor whose honors students have used the
Internet for two years. What I had hoped we would be able to get
that network to do is access libraries, to find that other
information and use it as a source, but right now there just
aren't many libraries that are online with all their
information.''
Internet, for all its 20-year history, is just growing up.
There are cultures in collision,'' said a network manager who
requested anonymity. One is the hacker, everything-should-be-free
culture; one is the research culture; and one is a coalition of
academia and industrial people trying their hand at running
something that is growing very, very rapidly.''
Adding yet another dimension is concern over the role of an
expanded, $5 billion government involvement in the network at the
same time private industry is exerting a growing influence.
This debate focuses on Advanced Network & Services, a non-
profit company created last year to bring more formal management
to the government-owned intercity transmission facilities that
form the network's backbone.
ANS was formed by IBM, MCI Communications and Merit Inc. - a
Michigan consortium that previously oversaw the network under
the supervision of the National Science Foundation and continues
to fill this role under the supervision of Advanced Network.
Advocates of an open network fear that oversight by such
corporate giants will limit competition through proprietary
technology and stifle smaller interests attempting to participate
in profitable commercial applications of the network.
They also worry that the appearance of monopoly might invite
government regulation, introducing yet another potential
impediment to an open system.
A player now on the horizon might assure lively competition. A
source confirmed that AT&T is seriously considering going into
competition with ANS, which would dramatically change the
landscape.
One entrepreneur who would welcome this development is Ed
Vielmetti, whose Michigan State Enterprise Network has tangled
with ANS over its role as an alternate Internet service provider.
MSEN is also developing a network-based information service.
People are so buffaloed by this vision of a national network
that Gore has put forward,'' Vielmetti said. The metaphors he
uses are just perfect - everyone can understand good roads. What
they are not telling you is that they've contracted with exactly
one cement company, and they're going to charge you a lot for
that cement.
There are people making decisions on the future of the
Internet who are not accountable to anyone, who are not visible
to anyone, who do not have any constituency that is able to be
determined at first glance unless maybe you look at their
funding. There's going to have to be oversight on some
level.''
In watching the network, the thing that's not been pointed out
enough is the creation of new companies left and right,'' said
David J. Farber, professor of computer science at the University
of Pennsylvania and co-instigator of the Aurora Gigabit Testbed
Initiative, which is developing the technology for high-
performance networks. It's had a major impact on the economy. I
think the high-performance networks will create another industry
unless we turn it off. The way you encourage this is to let there
be a lot of players.''
(A gigabit is a measure of computer capacity. It represents
the ability to transmit the equivalent of an Encyclopedia per
second.)
Dick Liebhaber, MCI executive vice president and ANS board
member, agreed the network should be open. You've got to pay to
play, however, which is what we're experimenting with at ANS,''
he said.
Mitchell D. Kapor, founder of Lotus Technology and an industry
activist who has become the leading voice for equal rights
online, urged informed public debate: The competitive environment
means that people have to be able to interconnect, that the net
isn't broken up into islands, that there is a standard set of
services available that work no matter which carrier you're
connected to.
Today, we risk being sold a bill of goods: extravagant
promises about the potential benefits of a national network
followed by an inevitable disappointment in the result. A network
that is responsive to a wide spectrum of human needs will not
evolve by default.''
Building a data superhighway
The actual level of funding in millions of dollars for the Inter-
net computer network and the projected cost of developing Inter-
net into the National Research and Education Network over the
next five fiscal years:
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Agency* 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| NSF $169.0 $213.0 $262.0 $305.0 $354.0 $413.0 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| NASA 54.0 72.0 107.0 134.0 151.0 145.0 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| DOE 65.0 93.0 110.0 138.0 157.0 168.0 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| DOC/NIST 2.1 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| DOC/NOAA 1.4 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| EPA 1.4 5.0 5.5 6.0 6.5 47.0 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| DOD/DARPA 183.0 232.2 283.0 353.0 399.0 447.0 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| HHS/NIH 13.5 17.1 33.0 36.0 40.0 44.0 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Totals $489.4 $637.8 $807.0 $979.52 $1,116.0 $1,273.5|
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| NREN TOTAL (Fiscal years 1992-96): $4.8 billion |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
*Agencies abbreviated in the chart are the National Science Foun-
dation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the
Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce (the National
Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Oceanic
Atmospheric Agency), the Environmental Protection Agency, the
Department of Defense (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)
and Health and Human Services (National Institutes of Health).
Source: National Science Foundation, White House Office of Sci-
ence and Technology Policy, House-approved version of the High
Performance Computing Act of 1991
