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From: randolph@cognito.Eng.Sun.COM (Randolph Fritz)
Newsgroups: misc.consumers,alt.activism,talk.environment,comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Historical thoughts
Message-ID: <7896@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 12 Feb 91 22:30:52 GMT
References: <156606@felix.UUCP> <1991Feb5.192632.20536@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <157119@felix.UUCP> <1991Feb12.045629.9917@cs.ucla.edu> <1991Feb12.212831.18021@linus.mitre.org>
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I think that quite a few of the issues we are encountering with
commerical e-mail and BBS systems were actually worked out in the very
early history of telecommications and rail transport.

Time was when telephone companies were very proud to interconnect with
no-one.  In the old small-town manual exchanges, monitoring and biased
routing was the order of the day.  One charming story has the inventor
of the first automatic telephone switch being the owner of a funeral
parlor and the town's telephone operator being married to the owner of
another funeral parlor.

A lot of this was resolved in communications and common carrier law;
perhaps it's time we reviewed that history for lessons for our new
technologies.

   nd t
 ou    ui
R Press  T  __Randolph Fritz  sun!cognito.eng!randolph || randolph@eng.sun.com
 ou    ui     The global gossipy small town, planet Earth
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