[10504] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Still Glowing Embers
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dick St.Peters)
Fri Feb 25 17:21:49 1994
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 94 10:54:16 EST
From: stpeters@spare-parts.crd.ge.com (Dick St.Peters)
To: dave@oldcolo.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
Reply-To: <stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com>
> From: dave@oldcolo.com (Dave Hughes)
> Date: Tue, 25 Jan 1994 07:05:31 -0700 (MST)
> 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.
Don't worry about this. The government could saturate things some
sort term, but that will create the demand and economies of scale
that lead to more capacity and lower costs. Besides, government
isn't just going on-line to talk to itself, it wants/needs to talk
to us as citizens, businesses, regulatees.
The NY department of health went "on-line" a few years ago, for the
purpose of receiving monthly reports from 2000 or so hospitals,
clinics, nursing home, etc. around the state. They are required to
file by email - uucp, no less. The state set up a backbone with nodes
at several points around the state, the STATE bought the equipment used
in the 2000 sites, and _they_still_saved_money_ over doing it by mail.
> Then, it seems, 'business' has discovered the net, and here
> come the advertisements.
"Business" is a LOT more than just advertising - the thing that amazes
me is the extent to which people on the net think of business as
selling to the public. The great majority of business communication is
for the internal workings of business, where by "internal" I don't mean
necessarily within one company.
> 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?
"Distort" is a pejorative way of saying "change". Things are most
certainly going to change bigtime. There will be ups and downs, but
letting everyone on, indeed encouraging them to be on, can hardly
help but be for the better overall.
Dave, you wrote a great posting noting the civil and military loss
from the absence of cross-fertilization of ideas and cultures. I
believe that having all those federal, state, and city (and county
and business and academic and foreign and ...) people out milling
_together_ on the net will be good for us all.
--
Dick St.Peters
GE Corporate R&D, Schenectady, NY stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com
