[2008] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Thots
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dave Hughes)
Fri Jan 17 13:40:56 1992
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 1992 11:39:54 -0700
From: Dave Hughes <daveh@csn.org>
To: com-priv@psi.com
>I think we all need to move beyond the current model of the Internet in
>order to begin to think about what interoperability and connectivity
>will evolve into.
No, I think we should think about what interoperability and connectivity
SHOULD evolve into. Which, for me, is simple. Total, global,
interoperability and connectivity - flat rate. Radical idea? I don't
think so.
Now if some end-of-the-line system/person which is NOT a link to further
systems, doesn't want to be 'accessed', ok. But so long as the
intermediate links are needed to reach end-point systems, then I sure
want them to 'pass' the traffic. But am I supposed to learn, and know,
the byzantine 'use', and 'access' rules, themselves always subject to
change, of every 'net', gateway, subsystem in the world? If so, I am
inclined to reach for my Qblazer V32 modem and go direct-dial and bypass
the whole increasingly complicated mess.
I wanted to see what Dialog had to offer 'over the net' differently than
by direct dial or through X25 Sprintnet/Tymnet etc. And I think they
want me to access them as a potential 'customer' - whether commercial or
educational. But we could'nt reach each other last night. In a network
set up to make it better, faster, cheaper, than before.
Sure, there are lots of economic, political, policy matters to be
considered. But if the whole point of having interconnected systems in
the first place is to, well, interconnect, then I don't why we should
START by trying to take into account those limitations, rather than do
something novel - vizualize the ideal - flat rate universal
interoperability and connectivity, and try to figure out how to get
there from here. It might even take some original, and unprecedented
thinking about the increasingly artificial distinctions between
'academic', 'commercial', non-profit, for-profit, government use of
telecom. For at bottom we are, after all, now and in the future more
connecting up 'people' than 'institutions' upon which those distinctions
have been based, and are blurring ever more. Three successive messages
generated at ones desk at a terminal or computer can be personal,
professional-institutional, and/or commercial. And just as even the
distinction between 'business' rate phones and 'residential' rates is
becoming laugable with so many 'work-study-research-at-home' is becoming
artificial as the 'place' of work has become disconnected from edifices,
so the use, by people, of data communications, beside automatic
institutional communications and data-exchange isn't going to neatly fit
into the pigeon-holes of prior telecommunications 'use' policies.
All I know is, that which ought to be opening up, seems to be closing
down, as more and more Trolls are guarding all the bridges linking the
highways of the realm.
Ha! The Internet seems to be heading for the electronic counterpart to
the break-up of the Communist Bloc - all balkanized, and with different
passports for everything, and with big second thoughts now as to whether
things will be 'better' than before. Where is the 'progress?'
We have met the Internet enemy and it is us.
