[2315] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: commercial use and billing
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ken Laws)
Fri Feb 7 02:17:47 1992
Date: Thu 6 Feb 92 23:14:49-PST
From: Ken Laws <LAWS@ai.sri.com>
To: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <9202061240.AA24174@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu>
> From Sean McLinden:
> How do you determine the value of an arbitrary volume of information until
> you have consumed it (at some expense to you).
Perhaps this is the key to breaking the commercial barrier.
We need a system where you can "look at" information before
it is transmitted in full over the network, as you would look
at pictures in a catalog before ordering. Dialog does this by
letting you see titles, then abstracts, and finally full text
if you want to pay for it. My Usenet news reader does it by
letting me see subject lines before NNTP brings in full articles.
Transmission delays make this approach infeasible for email at
present, but increased bandwidth may make it reasonable for
message text to be stored at the sender's site until the receiver
agrees to accept it. This would certainly ease the junk mail problem.
> I know that Steve's division and Larry Rosenberg's were concerned with
> social computing usage a few years ago, but I'm not sure what resulted
> from that interest.
Larry's division -- IRIS, where he's the deputy director -- is still
very much interested in collaboratory technology and social effects
of computing. Larry's special initiative on collaboration ran its
two-year course, and the topic is now integrated with the regular
research program.
-- Ken
-------
