[12805] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Yes folks, this is not a joke
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bruce Gingery)
Sun May 29 16:05:45 1994
Date: Sun, 29 May 1994 00:40:53 -0600 (MDT)
From: Bruce Gingery <lcbginge@antelope.wcc.edu>
Reply-To: Bruce Gingery <lcbginge@antelope.wcc.edu>
To: Miles R Fidelman <fidelman@civicnet.org>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9405281051.A8456-0100000@world.std.com>
I'll take my occaisional chime-in here..
On Sat, 28 May 1994, Miles R Fidelman wrote:
>( On Fri, 27 May 1994, Bill Frezza wrote:)
>
> Any bets as to whether or not we'd have the Internet today without
> Federal funding of:
>
> i. the ARPANET
>
> ii. CSnet
I don't know. FidoNet(sm) exists without any federal funding, and
operating over the switched telephone network. If Internet as we see it
today had never existed but the people who for years have enjoyed ARPA and
NSF... had been dumped, lumped, and worked together with the too often
underated "amateurs" who knows?
> iii. TCP/IP development
WaZOO/ZedZap, SeaLINK...
> iv. NSFnet backbone and regionals
Fido Backbone and Hubs
> v. connection subsidies for universities
Again, who knows what would have happened if the government regulated
segregation had not occurred? Fido->Fido node via the NSF backbone and
some others are (I understand) still not welcome -- in violation of the
Fido<->Internet gatewaying agreement. If mixed traffic had ocurred long
ago, we might have the "Infobahn" in a more advanced state today and T1's
would have been leased by small coops of sysop's instead of MCI, Sprint,
and the like quite some time ago as a more efficient manner of moving the
more massive amounts of data that the change in circumstances would have
pushed into what is still now normally limited by voice-path bandwidth.
> All leading to:
> -- the basic technology
see above.
> -- a base of commercial product and service vendors
Those commercial concerns who have been forsighted enough, and imaginative
enough to implement at least local services over dial-up services have
gotten business that way. Most were doing this via long-distance and
1-800 service BEFORE any percieved openings in this medium were available
for the same commercial facilities.
> -- a critical mass of users and content (lets not forget all the services
> that universities provide free to other Internet users)
Well, I don't have an accurate count... for JUST FidoNet, but last time
I looked, a couple weeks ago, it was around 33000 nodes, representing
twenty to a thousand users per node. That doesn't include the other
smaller networks which use the same technology and much of the same
software. This is nearly all "people", though there are some BBSs
run as businesses, often concentrated in certain cities.
The biggest reason that significant commercial traffic never has uti-
lized this technology is that it has never been "credited" or "validated"
in the academic community -- another indirect outgrowth of federal
sponsorship of ARPA/CSnet/NSFnet...
> -- a user base that is over 30% commercial, with commercial use as the
> fastest growing portion
Is as inevitible as the telephone became in the early part of this
century. VERY few businesses get by without ANY telelphone service
and some operate their business primarily via telephone links (at present).
> -- an increasingly privatized infrastructure that is close to self-sufficient
Hmmmm. Privatization becomes a multiple meaning word. If a
multi-national corporation is BIGGER than the government entities it deals
with, is operation or ownership by that corporation really "privatized"?
(Max Headroom move over)
> You might also ask if we'd have an air transport system today if:
> i. the Federal government hadn't given birth to the aircraft industry
> with lots of warplane purchases between World Wars I and II
We would have a DIFFERENT aircraft industry and air transport industry
today. The purchase of warplanes (I'd hope) was in the government
charter of defense, rather than the semi-charter of economic manipulation.
> ii. Federal airmail business providing a stable base for commercial
> airlines to build their freight and passenger businesses
Any business with a "stable" base income is less risky than one which
depends on the free market, if it doesn't become complacent pulling on a
government teat. If it does, it can never be weaned and remain stable,
because it is so rare for it to establish internal stability, or even
obtain the experience which would allow it to determine a position of
internal stability.
I sound all one-sided in the above, but frankly I have mixed feelings
and am quite undecided. Hindsight is necessary for estimation of the
future, yet that hindsight must be wider than any of the opinions
(including mine in paragraphs above this one) that I've seen expressed in
this group for the past few months! And that includes messages I've seen
over-and-over-and-over again in quotes, in dups, and just re-written using
slightly different wording.
Perhaps it's the doom of a divided comittee to spend more time arguing
than trying to find workable and acceptable alternatives. What we need
here is a helluva lot more innovation, and a lot less bickering and even
calls for compromise.
There are a lot of people who have just dropped out, because they'd
hoped to see something worthwhile here and only found repeated stagnant
arguments. Yet there are still many "humman-centuries" of experience and
resources here, and a lot of minds QUITE capable of innovation, when aimed
in that direction.
There are very few people here who will openly admit that they are
against "privatization of the internet" or at any rate, that believe that
an interconnected private and commercial networking entity or groups of
entities are needed, and inevitable. How about we look for suitable
answers to HOW that can be done, instead of rehashing old arguments.
I'm not pushing a "Bush-ian thousand points of light" nor a "Gore-ian
infobahn" -- just saying that if people who ARE interested in best
outcomes don't work at it, those with ONLY a profit (and control) motive
will do it and the arguments will only stop when they become completely
moot, or the pathways for carrying them die because of incompatible
replacement.
Bruce Gingery
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