Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: email's not real Mail, now, is it?
Message-ID: <1990Dec25.060925.16612@looking.on.ca>
Date: 25 Dec 90 06:09:25 GMT
References: <6504@crash.cts.com> <1990Dec24.171425.29452@nas.nasa.gov> <BZS.90Dec24223744@world.std.com>
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 43

Before to long I can't imagine that much pay by the hour online computing
will be left in the consumer market.  It will remain in the business
and database market for much longer, but may eventually die there, too.

The basic services -- mail, news, database searching, and the datacomm needed
for them -- are getting cheaper and there's no reason to think they won't
continue to get a lot cheaper.

A single gigabit fiber line, as I pointed out, could easily handle all the
continuous typing output of the human race.  How long before our lines
can easily handle the entire voice output of the human race, in hi-fi?
(Video, on the other hand, can increase in bandwith almost without limit
as we demand more resolution.   But if compression gets good...?)

This is literally "too cheap to meter."  Not in computer time, which can
easily meter a cost of a fractional penny, but in human time.

Soon you won't buy processing power from other people either, except in
rare cases.  You'll have all you need for most purposes as a consumer.
You'll only buy information and access to it, and communication with your
associates.

It's going to be so cheap in fact, that Prodigy's model is wrong.  There
will be no need for advertising to support the basic system.  Advertising
may continue to support individual things, but that will be on a case by
case basis.

But that may not last either.  In a network world, we can all pay a
penny to read a story and make the author a millionaire.  All it takes is
10% of the 1 billion educated people in the world.   .1% still nets $10,000.

I expect basic services to be on a fixed-payment plan almost everywhere by
the millenium, with pay-to-read charges for much of the good stuff.
It's not good for publishers, but computers rip out that vast mechanism which
has caused authors to get just a tiny, tiny percentage of what a limited
audience pays for their stuff.   Suddenly we can all have popular information
real, real cheap, and reward the authors very well.

For limited-market informaton, the old rules will still largely apply.
(The logistics like printing and postage were never much of the cost of your
$500/year newsletter.)
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473