[8685] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: One-way Internet?..no, it's "Asymetric"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dave Hughes)
Tue Nov 30 16:08:30 1993
From: dave@oldcolo.com (Dave Hughes)
To: Mark-Ludwig@uai.com (Mark R. Ludwig)
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 14:05:11 -0700 (MST)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com (compriv)
In-Reply-To: <9311302014.AA00101@hp.uai.com> from "Mark R. Ludwig" at Nov 30, 93 12:14:28 pm
Well, what can we learn from the European experiences of the past?
Seemed to me that ther have been many services, even modems, in
Europe that were based on low speed return for relatively higher
speed outward flow.
I don't think its got much to do with 'lurking.' I am hardly
a 'lurker', and have been 'online' for 4-5 hours a day every
day for over 10 years - my own services, BBSs, commercial
sevices, Usenet linked services, Internet services. I once
calculated that I had read 35,000,000 words online while
producing 1,500,000 during the period. Boy, if the 5,000 or
so (what *is* the number?) of comprivers posted as much as they
read, gag! The Internet Tower of Babel (some think it is already)
But I also, in teaching a seminal course in 'Electronic English'
calculated that one online person can keep up with - read - the
output of 9 other people online, while producing his own, over
any given unit of time. (like 1 hour). Using the differential
between 'reading' speed and 'typing' speed, providng the service
is asynchronous.
So, while people speak at 120 wprds per minute (and are obliged to
listen at the same rate in any real-time f-t-f or phone conferencing
arrangment, people can 'read' online (with comprehension) at least
300 words per minute, but most can only type at 30 words per minute.
Thus a little math will demonstrate that a 10 person online group
over the same hour in an asynchronous bbs-conference-newsgroup
mode can 'exchange' nearly 15,000 words in an hour, while they
can only 'hear/speak' 7,200 or so, yet everyone gets to have
his or her say, producing 180 words of their own in 6 minutes of
writing while reading the product of the 9 others the other 54
minutes - with everybody coming out the same. Which, for my
purposes, says than online conferencing is twice as efficient
in terms of information exchange as f-t-f babble, just in
numbers of words, not to speak of all the other advantages (and
few disadvantages). And which is why I think the ideal online
class-course structured-meeting size is 10 people.
(but which is also why I can't stand IRC chatting - the worst
of informtatin-rate exchange)
Vary the numbers any way you like within reason - there is no
way that, if everyone produced text as much as they consumed,
for any one of them to keep up. Everyone is talking to themselves
on here anyway, aren't they?
Or, in the case of compriv, thank God for Lurkers.
