[2607] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
The Emporer's Clothes
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dave Hughes)
Sun Mar 22 12:06:26 1992
Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1992 10:05:06 -0700
From: Dave Hughes <daveh@csn.org>
To: com-priv@psi.com
Dick Karpinksi asks:
>Thus ANY AUP for any cross-regional network such as NSFNET is a
>total exercise in futility. It represents IDIOCY and must be
>eliminated in any plan to make sense of networking in this nation.
>Can anyone deny the obvious reality of this simple claim?
At last we have a few frustrated voices whose eyes recognize the
Internet Emperor and his Virtual Bride NREN have no clothes.
Dick is dead right. All efforts should be directed toward moving as
rapidly as possible toward a wide open, including commercial
traffic, global, not-controlled-by-one-entity network. And without
Byzantine rules which will drag the whole network into the
convoluted buracracy that computers and telecom are supposed to free
us from.
And the National Science Foundation should be the one to say that
themselves right to the face of Congress. Asking for whatever
legislation is needed to make it possible. With the principal of
'Universal Data Access' (price and connectivity) driving the whole
policy. With the absolute minimum of 'Data Control' on matters of
substance, while all efforts are directed at the difficult matters
of economics, performance, standards, and growth.
Its time to look at the broadest Public, and not just Individual
(institutional, corporate, government) Interest. Its time, folks, to
drop the scales from your eyes and see the realities of a core
network everyone wants to use, everyone wants to be able to pay for,
every company wants to profit from, every telco wants to hook to,
every university wants for their own purposes, every K-12 school
wants to introduce their kids to, every library wants to be accessed
over, every researcher and self-employed knowledge worker wants to
connect to, and every politician wants to take credit for.
If we can't figure out how to give America that, then we deserve to
lose - to the Japanese, Germans, European Community, Pacific Rim
nations, or whoever else has the sense to see where we are all going
in the future - and deliver it forthwith.
Benjamin Franklin would have been the first owner of a microcomputer
- an Apple II. Thomas Jefferson would have written the Declaration
of Independence on an IBM PC in Word Perfect 5.0. And Thomas Paine
would have put Common Sense on the first pirate bulletin-board.
I don't want any corporate or government King's George treading on
my cursor. We must have absolute freedom of Electronic Speech,
Digital Assembly, and Cursor Commerce over networks created by
public funds. If private entities, with their own money, want to
create networks, control it any way they want, and sell it to me
because it is better for me than public networks - ok. But any
network created by public funds (and I don't forget that most every
university and midlevel here is also the recipient of public funds.
They are not as 'private' as they want everyone to believe.)
The proper function of Government in this case is exactly what it
was in the Constitutional Convention of 1785 - providing, among other
things, in the Constitution no less, for a system of 'Post Roads'
for the carrying of information of the day - paper mail.
Now it is time for open Highways of the Mind to be legislated and
opened up, funded to the point that Everyman, woman, child and
self-starting computer can use them for any legal purpose.
If we in the US *don't* repeat political history in this matter -
which deals no less than with the way Americans will connect up
their minds to each other - we will sink back into the Balkanization
of Europe, (which has taken them centuries to grow out of), the
Power mongers of Asia (from war lords to corporate dictators), or
the backwardness of the Middle Ages (where Rome incestously debated
angels on a pin while Copernicus looked at the stars the way they
really were) and the Information Rich (those who could afford
private tutors) lorded it over the Information Poor (those would
were illiterate) - until Gutenburg made society egalaterian for at
least 300 years.
Now, at the true dawning of the Electronic Information Age (where
everyperson can now technically and economically be connected) we
either continue that grand political tradition started in 1776 -
with its unique synthesis of public and private interest - for the
benefit of all - or we too, will fail as a nation, as all others
before us have. When they couldn't adapt new forms of power to their
ultimate national social vision.
daveh@csn.org
dave%oldcolo@csn.org
Dave Hughes Fido 1/128/67
