Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!bu.edu!m2c!risky.ecs.umass.edu!dime!cs.umass.edu From: HELLER@cs.umass.edu (From the screen of Deneva...) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Re: Prodigy ... Message-ID: <30316@dime.cs.umass.edu> Date: 9 May 91 17:09:35 GMT Sender: news@dime.cs.umass.edu Organization: COINS, UMass, Amherst Lines: 39 In article , lee@wang.com (Lee Story) writes... >> >> In article <52328@apple.Apple.COM> cep@Apple.COM (Christopher Pettus) writes: >> >> Until electronic mail is made into a common carrier, with the same >> restrictions and rights that other common carriers have, this problem >> will continue. >> >> like netnews-style open bulletin boards. It appears to me that to the >> average educated person electronic mail and electronic discussion is >> the obscure province of afficionados, mostly technicians and >> academics, and is decidedly not the "information appliance" that it >> should be by now. Who knows? Readily-available email, complete with >> directory services, bulletin boards, and other ancillary services might >> inspire a revival of epistolary writing. >> >> Comments? >> -- >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> Lee Story (lee@wang.com) Wang Laboratories, Inc. >> (Boston and New Hampshire AMC, and Merrimack Valley Paddlers) >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ With many non-computer techies getting home computers, often with modems and with the existence of FidoNet, much of what you are looking for already exists. It would be nice if things were nicely bundled, and some sort of E-Mail common carriers were available in the same way as the telephone, the USPS, and UPS/FedEx/etc. Robert Heller ARPANet: Heller@CS.UMass.EDU BIX: locks.hill.bbs GEnie: RHeller FidoNet: 1:321/153 (Locks Hill BBS, Wendell, MA) CompuServe 71450,3432 Local PV VAXen: COINS::HELLER UCC Cyber/DG: Heller@CS