[2171] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Are We to Buy Speed for a Few or Connectivity for Many?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen Wolff)
Wed Jan 29 08:26:54 1992
To: com-priv@psi.com
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 92 08:16:29 EST
From: Stephen Wolff <steve@ncri.cise.nsf.gov>
Gordon Cook:
> While Robert Lucky didn't use the specific word hype in his address to
> the Gigabit symposium in DC last July 16th..... his message was clear: who
> needs gigabits? No one.
Dave Farber:
> And who needs more than four IBM 704s and who needs a machine that
> can copy documents and who needs a computer in the home and who needs
> a pocket size tape player and etc etc etc. Will we never learn that
> projecting current ideas and ways into new technology is HARD.
>
> Step right up and you too can join the ranks of the illustrious folks
> who said the above in their times.
flame on.
I agree with Dave. Researchers need gb/s NOW. And any who have been
following the other thread - on "low-end users" and how they need MORE
service from the network, rather than less - may dimly recall me saying the
same thing at Gordon's first Gigabit-bashing Soiree and Symposium.
Accomplished and computer-literate researchers will cobble together bits and
fragments of FORTRAN, C, DCL, shell scripts and even if necessary JCL (!) to
get their job done; the low-end folk NEED power tools - plug and play, or
aim and squirt, choose your metaphor - like Lotus 1-2-3 to do arithmetic or
WordPerfect to format text, and the corresponding tools for navigating the
network and exploiting its resources will be correspondingly profligate with
bandwidth and capacity (remember the "fingers that launched a thousand
knowbots"), and if we don't provide it we shall have failed the community
who in the strongest sense need it the most.
flame off.
-s
