[10760] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Internet vs Minitel : a futuristic view of the network e
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Marvin Sirbu)
Tue Mar 8 04:43:15 1994
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 1994 22:40:35 -0500 (EST)
From: Marvin Sirbu <ms6b+@andrew.cmu.edu>
To: com-priv@psi.com, "Rob Main" <rmain@nas.edu>
In-Reply-To: <9402077630.AA763082120@nas.edu>
Excerpts from internet.com-priv: 7-Mar-94 Re: Internet vs Minitel : a..
by "Rob Main"@nas.edu
> In some respects comparing the Minitel network with Internet is apples and
> oranges. You have to be careful in predicting that one will supplant
the other.
> They are based, as has been said, on very different architectural models with
> different philosophies and markets. The Minitel system I believe has a
central
> "well" where all information providers go to post their wares. This is more
> like the centralized Compuserve and Prodigy models, than the
distributed nature
> of Internet. One of the things that makes the Internet a fundamentally unique
> phenomenon is that everyone can potentially be an information provider or
> producer. There is no central clearing house for information. It's
> self-organizing. I also think that it is may be a little too early to attempt
> to draw too many comparisons between Minitel and Internet as we haven't yet
> begun to see the impact that the growth of Internet into homes will have.
Lehoux's ignorance of the Internet is exceeded only by most Internaut's
ignorance of Minitel.
Minitel -- nor Compuserve and Prodigy for that matter -- are not just
central computers on which information providers put their data. In
France there are more than 10,000 information providers who put up data
on their own computers -- sometimes as small as a PC. Called "Kiosk's"
these small providers talk directly to a user's Minitel terminal over
France's Transpac packet data network. The genious of Minitel is that it
provides a centralized billing system that allows these Kiosk operators
to make money, something that the Internet does not provide to the
myriad WWW or Gopher based service providers.
Marvin Sirbu
