[10354] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Still Glowing Embers
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dave Hughes)
Sat Feb 19 09:24:48 1994
From: dave@oldcolo.com (Dave Hughes)
To: com-priv@psi.com (compriv)
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 1994 07:05:31 -0700 (MST)
Of course there was a legitimate question lurking beneath
David Rothman's postings about Robert Steele's 'Billion Dollar'
proposal, which I think helped fuel his passionate questioning.
It has little to do with whether or not US Intelligence (or
even Military) agencies are in the net.
Its whether or not the sheer *scale* of involvement
represented by expenditures for individual accounts by Government -
whatever agencies - will tend to suffocate open 'citizen'
participation, or, however you want to define it, 'private'
involvement.
In one sense, to the dismay of academics and researchers,
who had the net to themselves for lo, these many years, outsiders -
such as educators 'discovered' the net a few years ago, and are now
flooding the net, and getting ready to drag 40 million kids on here
with them. (and I have done everything I can to make that happen :-)
Then, it seems, 'business' has discovered the net, and here
come the advertisements.
And of course, there is now occuring an incredible amount of
'bandwagonism' as opportunists and camp followers who jump on every
fad to try and make a buck are taking the simplist ideas and trying
to blow them up into empires.
Now, with this Administration's vigerous advocacy and
leadership in getting everyone on the 'Information Highways', and
use of technology and telcom in its zeal to 'Reinvent Government'
are we not about to see a very large *investment* by government in
getting its millions of uniformed, civilian employees, contractors,
and hangers-on online? Not with necessarily large by the
'population' standards, but if the kind of big bucks the Federal,
*and* State, *and* Cities are capable of spending will that distort
the economics, the services, the culture?
