[12124] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Internet vs Minitel : 2nd version less contreversial
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Doug Humphrey)
Fri May 6 15:18:47 1994
Date: Fri, 6 May 1994 12:13:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: Doug Humphrey <digex@ss1.digex.net>
To: "James (Eric) Tilton" <jtilton@willamette.edu>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com, Doug Humphrey <doug@ss1.digex.net>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9405051637.A2029-0100000@jupiter>
In many ways, the Internet is still a "development" network, and
Minitel is a "production" network. Now, the Internet is moving toward
being a production net, and it certainly is long past being a research
net, but Minitel is clearly a production environment, with operations
standards and procedures, and managers and a lot of things that the
Internet, because of being made up of many different nets, etc, does
not have in any *consistant* and widespread way.
Minitel has that interface which is the same everywhere; Internet
offers a wide variety of choices of interface. Two edged sword.
The people who want to put product up don't WANT to have multiple-
choices in interface. I was in a meeting last night with someone
whos firm has exactly that problem - what does the customer have
available in the way of an interface? Is MIME available? Do they
have UUENCODE around? Simple issues, but hard to answer. With
a single interface out there (like Minitel) then the information
provider KNOWS what the user will have in the way of resources,
and is able to code accordingly.
Do I think Minitel will wipe out Internet? Not in a million
years. Minitel became "mature" and thus has those advantages right
now, but it is not able to experience the innovation that the Internet
can. When the Internet hits that "mature" and "production" phase,
it will be one hundred times what Minitel is. And, it too will
then be mature, and unable to evolve very quickly, and will get
replaced just like Minitel did, when something else comes along.
Winning is a transient thing; Minitel has won, now Internet will
win, then something else.
Doug
