Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!airs!ian
From: ian@airs.com (Ian Lance Taylor)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: Reciprocity and Cyberspace, paper for "Civilizing Cyberspace" Meeting
Message-ID: <1934@airs.com>
Date: 22 Jun 91 19:55:27 GMT
References: <1991Jun21.151901.16656@milton.u.washington.edu>
Sender: news@airs.com
Lines: 41

cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) writes:

>Reciprocity in Cyberspace

>Robert Jacobson
>June 1991

This is an interesting paper (I'm not going to quote it; look it up
yourself), but I'm not quite sure what it means.

Let's take Usenet as a sample network.  It's interesting to compare
this request to the ``What is Usenet'' argument going on in
news.admin.  Currently the readers of Usenet mostly have the ability
to determine which newsgroups are propagated, by voting on them.  Is
this what you're asking for?

Since Usenet is a distributed network, it's not really possible for a
single person to control much of it.  For example, you might decide
that binary attachments to news would be a good idea, and you might
even implement it on your system, but there's nobody you could call to
get it implemented world-wide.  On the other hand, if you do a good
implementation and yell about it loudly, then after a few years about
half the Usenet sites will be able to receive your binary attachments.
Is this what you're asking for?

All networks are based on some underlying physical implementation.
This is probably just a case of techno-elite snobbery, but if somebody
who doesn't understand the technical requirements of the system makes
impossible suggestions, why should anybody listen to them?  Perhaps
closer to home, if somebody asks for a new feature that is difficult
to implement, but cannot implement it themselves, why should anybody
listen to them?

A true-blue free market enthusiast would say that if a network doesn't
do what you want, and enough people agree with you, somebody else will
start a network that does do what you want.
-- 
Ian Taylor                   ian@airs.com                 uunet!airs!ian
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