[8703] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
One-way internet: Escaping the television/telephone analogies
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brad Cox @ GMU/PSOL)
Wed Dec 1 00:20:57 1993
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 23:40:50 -0500
To: com-priv@psi.com (compriv)
From: bcox@gmu.edu (Brad Cox @ GMU/PSOL)
Cc: dave@oldcolo.com (Dave Hughes), smith@whistler.sfu.ca
dave@oldcolo.com (Dave Hughes) wrote:
>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?
Why must NII be "like" television or telephones? Why not something
completely unlike either? Dave's analysis assumes NII is like telephones; a
carrier of chit-chat of the sort that certainly does dominate mailgroup
traffic today. Other posters assumed the opposite analogy based on
television.
Is it too much a stretch of imagination to think of the NII as an
infrastructure like the highway and railroad infrastructures of the past; a
carrier of *goods* from individual producer to consumer as distinct from
random chit-chat (telephone) or broadcast propaganda from various
incarnations of big brother (television)?
Admittedly, getting anyone to take the idea of information age "goods"
seriously requires property rights mechanisms that aren't in place today.
The biggest of these is a revenue collection mechanism for goods made of
bits and not atoms. which is not a neglible difference because it undercuts
the scarcity-based revenue collection mechanisms upon which commerce in
tangible goods is based.
A solution clearly isn't in place today. But all of the *pieces* of a
solution are; computers, communications (internet and/or NII), and
financial institutions. These could be glued together with techno-glue like
encryption, communication protocols, etc. The gluing-together is a
significant technical problem, of course, but no worse than other technical
problems we've already surmounted.
What better way of getting at the signal/noise ratio program than by
putting into place a financial incentive infrastructure whereby individual
citizens could leverage their tacit local knowledge providing informaton
age goods for individuals with similar interests; narrow-cast signal as
distinct from broadcast noise? Desktop publishing for citizens as *very*
distinct from the publishing, or the broadcasting, *industry*. Why not?
With this model, the incoming/outgoing ratio is exactly the reverse of
today, with big outgoing pipes for industries and teeny ones for ordinary
folk. Instead each citizen would need a thin incoming channel for taking
orders and a thick outgoing one for shipping goods.
FYI: I've proposed a revenue collection infrastructure that would support
this vision to ARPA for TRP funding, to Dept of Commerce as an ATP program
proposal, and in testimony to the PTO public hearing last week.
--
Brad Cox; bcox@gmu.edu; 703 968 8229 Voice 703 968 8798 Fax
George Mason Program on Social and Organizational Learning
