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Date: Wed, 8 May 1991 12:56:03 CDT From: SEAN@dranet.dra.com (Sean Donelan) To: com-priv@psi.com, marc@MIT.EDU X-Vmsmail-To: SMTP%"com-priv@psi.com",SMTP%"marc@MIT.EDU" >I attended a conference at Boston University last week on NREN. As an >NREN novice, I found it very informative, but also a bit disturbing >(enough so to write something for my paper's business section :-) ). I'm a bit schizod on this issue. Whenever I talk to people who aren't on the Internet, I encourage them to get on it. On the other hand when ever I meet people who use the Internet, I always question why. But heck, I figure if the government is giving away free money, lets get some of it :-) >Stephen Wolff from the NSF and Kenneth King of Educom both went on at >considerable length about the benefits of the project (you know: doctors >swapping X-rays, researchers using distant supercomputers to plumb the >mysteries of the universe and that little girl in Tennessee browsing the >catalog at the Library of Congress). I sometimes think the benefit analysis needs a little more work. There are less costly ways to achieve these things. For $3,000/year any state library can search the Library of Congress databases. And I'd bet if the k-12 folks were given their choice between a free Internet connection, and a free FAX machine, most would take the FAX machine (with no ugly discussions about whether to use ASCII or Unicode). >Wolff said the government is going to wind up subsidizing any high-speed >network no matter what, because the researchers at whom it will first be >aimed would only include the costs of network access in future grant >proposals. Maybe, but shouldn't the companies that stand to benefit the >most from this privatization pay more of the upfront costs? This is true, but the government is also the largest user of regular telephones also. But this doesn't mean the government provides "free" telephone service to every university, college, and school in the U.S. When the interstate highway system was built, it was obviously a boom to the construction, trucking, and other industries. Private industry had its own toll roads at the time, why didn't the government just use them. Some parts of the country are going to build this infrastructure whether the government funds it or not. Other parts of the country may well slide into a type of information isolation. [Have you ever tried to drive into some of the backcountry of Senator Gore's home state of Tennessee? It might explain why he really wants this bill.] My biggest fear is the NREN has the real potential for killing off small institutions. Much like when the interstate highway bypassed a town, its commerce shrank dramatically. If the NREN bypasses an institution, I could see them have great trouble attracting faculty, and eventually students. And the last issue I have. What about the general public? We have thousands of terminals in public libraries all over the country on our network. With a single policy announcement, and a change in an access control list it would be possible for a person to walk into these public libraries and access the Internet today. Like someone told me "I think if the networks are at all publically funded, there should be a public on-ramp, as the metaphor goes." Now if we just figure out how to convince MIDNET not to charge us as if we had six million people :-) -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO 63132-1806 Domain: sean@dranet.dra.com, Voice: (Work) +1 314-432-1100
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