[252] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Other Researchers
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sean McLinden)
Fri Mar 1 13:31:29 1991
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 91 13:13:32 -0500
From: sean@dsl.pitt.edu (Sean McLinden)
To: craig@sics.se, dan@sci.ccny.cuny.edu, jqj@duff.uoregon.edu,
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In response to my response Dan Schlitt <dan@sci.ccny.cuny.edu> writes:
>I will readily agree that there is plenty of ignorance to go around. You make
>some very good points. But the point of departure for my comments was the
>question of who might speak for the educational community in the NREN
>debate.
I guess I was addressing that via indirection (others did this as well) by
suggesting that the educational community might not be the strongest ally
in the bid to push forward the concept of an NREN because with few exceptions
they do not have so critical a need for the type of technology that an
Internet style of network would deliver.
The Internet (and I include interactive services) was so warmly welcomed
by the information science/computing community because it was an *extension*
of what they already used in their daily work: the computer.
Again, look at X, Andrew... who were these designed for? The educators and
students. Who uses them? Researchers, programmers, certain applications users
who already used computers! As we speak things are changing, but fast enough
to expect support and participation from the non-IS community? I dunno.
We certainly do not want to exclude from consideration what are the educational
implications for the existence of such a resource (and organizations such as
EDUCOM have done a lot to contribute to such an awareness) but we may need to
look to other sources for reasons to build it in the first place.
Sean
