[10730] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Internet vs Minitel : a futuristic view of the network evolution ?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Doug Humphrey)
Mon Mar 7 05:31:41 1994
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 1994 00:11:45 -0500 (EST)
From: Doug Humphrey <digex@ss1.digex.net>
To: Marty Salo <msalo@garnet.acns.fsu.edu>
Cc: Miles R Fidelman <fidelman@civicnet.org>, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.07.9403062215.A18351-b100000@garnet.acns.fsu.edu>
Yes, there are nice search tools available on the Internet;
too many of them, in fact. You need to understand the point
of view of the Minitel user, who has only one "place" to go,
and is then hooked into ALL of the things that are available
on Minitel. I am not saying that this is better than the
Internet model (I own a company that is an Internet provider,
so if I have any bias here it should be obvious!)
What I am saying is that something like Minitel, limited in scope
as it might or might not be, was designed from the beginning for
presentation of information provided by the Information Providers.
There is never an issue of terminal type; you are on a minitel.
There is never an issue of using gopher or WWW or wais or archie
or veronica, or ftp, or ....; you are on a minitel, you use what
comes up on the screen. There is never an issue of which server
to hook into, or knowing that what you want is on hhtp://foo/bar/baz;
you are on a minitel, just follow the paths.
Again, I am not saying it is or is not better. It is VERY different
from the current Internet, and it's FOCUS is completely different.
If you dumped a minitel and an X term into your moms kitchen, there
is no question which one she (or her husband for that matter) would
figure out first. There is something to be learned there, for those
who are architecting the future of the Internet.
Doug
