[8831] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: VERY serious $ Business now done on Internet
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dave Hughes)
Mon Dec 6 13:44:53 1993
From: dave@oldcolo.com (Dave Hughes)
To: washburn@cix.org (Bill Washburn)
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 1993 11:39:31 -0700 (MST)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com (compriv)
In-Reply-To: <9312061241.AA16458@Cix.ORG> from "Bill Washburn" at Dec 6, 93 05:40:33 am
Bill Washburn says:
> I believe the
> efficiencies of Internet communications are sufficiently great to ensure
> that in a decade or so??? this statement about the Internet will be utterly
> non-controversial. Bill W.
>
>
Bill - Of *course* in a couple 'decades' the value of the Internet
or its decendents will be obvious to all. And eventually we will all
be dead too. But that is not the point. AT THIS TIME, the value of the
Internet is NOT obvious to huge segments of the US population. Nor
the relationship of government, tax subsidies, unregulated private
sector providing critical components to the 'net', or the importance
of it to business, and productivity.
In fact it will be *between* now and the decades ahead you are
talking about that the major public decisions will be made that shapes
the way telecommunications technologies will be implemented in US society.
The debate that will define it is now, not then.
So my problem with, not only this particular TIME issue and the few
misleading or innacurate statements made in it, but the whole approach TIME
has been taking to the subject of 'Cyberspace' (itself a pretty cutsy term)
as editorial policy since the first 'Cyberpunk' issue, with cover, a while
back. Its looks to me like that approach is *the* editorial approach of
TIME. Thanks. WIRED does it better.
Hell, hasn't the American public *already* been inundated enough
with the titillating stories of online sex, bizzare behavior, hacking,
'way out' practicioners of telecom, 'dangers' to schoolkids using the
Internet unsupervised, by second rate reporters for thrill seeking
magazines, to scare off millions of Americans from getting online? Do we
need one of the largest, and hitherto one of the most respected national
weekly magazines to go hippie on us NOW, when the productivity gains by
technology are one of the FEW assets the US has to get it the hell out of
its downward economic spiral, and for whom - such as the literally millions
of single parent, women-headed, families faced with making a living with
downward payscales, while coping with child care, FOR WHICH this medium
would be a godsend if they only knew about its potential and were not
scared to try it?
I doubt if many working mothers, who happened to read TIME last
week, are eager to join the Internet to improve their lot based on its
story.
BTW, where are the WOMEN in compriv, if the general value to this
society of the Internet is so 'obvious?'
Don't forget that when telephones FIRST came out, there were those,
typified by that practical-minded farmer who saw one in the general
store and asked "What would I have to say to anybody over one of those
things?"
