[11507] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: The whole CIX concept is flawed
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sean McLinden)
Mon Apr 4 22:13:19 1994
Date: Mon, 4 Apr 1994 18:19:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: Sean McLinden <sean@dsl.pitt.edu>
To: stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <9404042218.AA09117@bird.crd.Ge.Com>
On Mon, 4 Apr 1994, Dick St.Peters wrote:
> >From: Sean McLinden <sean@dsl.pitt.edu>
>
> >There is a huge digital data network out there that has very low startup
> >costs, no membership, and a large volume. All you need is $6 bucks a
> >month for dialtone and you've got FAX; store a bunch of phone numbers in
> >the thing and you've got routing. Replace FAXes with FAX modems,
> >computers, and OCR and you have FAX-email gateways. Still no membership
> >fee. Still at dialtone + usage-based pricing (and if it is in the
> >metropolitan network, it is flat rate).
>
> Sean, this is a good description of just the kind of thing I want not
> to happen: creation of disjoint, non-interoperable networking because
> it's all people can afford.
Dick:
I agree with you. I'm merely pointing out that FAX is e-mail for the
masses and it progressed, quite nicely thank you, while the rest of the
world quibbled about the superhighway and Internetworking. I agree with
you, people will pick the most inexpensive solution that covers 90% of
their needs, not the cadillac solution that covers 100%.
> Permit me an analogy, made with full understanding that analogies are
> only an aid in explanation, not a valid basis for argument. When the
> telephone was invented, business was used to doing business by
> telegraph. Some early business customers rented one phone and put it
> in their old telegraph room. Their vision was that employees would
> carry messages to the "telephone room", where the "telephone operator"
> would deliver the message to the receiving site's operator. The
> telephone's advantage was seen as simply that it didn't require an
> expensive skilled operator.
The *early days*! I remember when the University of Pittsburgh Medical
Center quibbled about whether there was a need for a phone in every
clinic room and that was 1986!
> Yes, this kind of integration is a long ways off, but the first pushes
> in that direction have begun. I've previously mentioned that GE's new
> line of scanners use tcp/ip for connections among subsystems, so they
> could in principle be distributed around the Internet. Larry Walker at
> GE Medical is taking the first steps toward implementing some of the
> potent service concepts that this enables.
Funny. When I met with GE in 1987 and they asked me what I would like to
see as an interface to scanner technology I told them to shove the
protocols (HL-7, DICOM, IEEE) and just export the damned file system using
NFS! They thought I was joking. Think of how much further teleradiology
would have been ahead if they had listened to the users, then, instead of
trying to figure out how to make a buck on the exchange of information!
Instead, 7 years later, we are talking about doing something we could
have done years ago! That is what I meant when I hinted at the KISS
principle and Indian cable TV.
> Nobody knows what new business and other implications such distributed
> systems can have. Perhaps large organizations buying and leasing big
> systems will partly give way to small groups or individuals buying and
> leasing out subsystems. Your medical scanner or factory control system
> or business information system might be a fluid, dynamic entity
> assembled from component pieces obtained as needed from around the
> network.
You are right. But I know how easy it is to stifle innovation. Just make
it too expensive or too hard for non-technocrats to play and the game is
over.
> Or perhaps not. But something, many things, will be different that we
> cannot foresee. I think the fundamental difference will be people and
> equipment at one place communicating directly with, even operating,
> equipment elsewhere. This needs real packet-passing networking.
Some day. But get REAL people using it, first. We didn't build the
500-channel television system, first, we built a small network with a
couple of players, and then came UHF, and FOX and cable... Imagine if we
had waited until we had 500 channels...where would we get the re-runs and
syndications to stuff on them?
Sean
