Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!kwe
From: kwe@bu-cs.BU.EDU (kwe@bu-it.bu.edu (Kent W. England))
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Networks, who pays
Summary: What kind of national network do you want?
Message-ID: <26167@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 20 Nov 88 17:38:41 GMT
References: <8811141443.AA06499@lll-crg.llnl.gov> <2231@ficc.uu.net> <6023@columbia.edu> <2358@looking.UUCP>
Reply-To: kwe@bu-it.bu.edu (Kent England)
Followup-To: comp.society.futures
Organization: Boston Univ. Information Tech. Dept.
Lines: 33


	What kind of national network do you want and need?

	Will uucp serve your needs?  Good, then a grass-roots,
user-funded national network is just the thing for you.

	Do you want:
	bulk-data transfer
	supercomputer access with "visualization"
	access to library information bases
	distributed directory services
	terminal access to remote systems?

	Then you need more than uucp.  Do you think that maybe the
NSFnet is going in the right direction?  Then what you need is a
coordinated effort to build a national network.

	I don't see how to succeed in this without the involvement of
government agencies as well as user funding.  We need a coordinator
and the educational community has been slow to produce such an agent.
Commercial firms, for the most part, are constrained from such an
agency.  The phone companies do not yet even understand what we are
trying to do.  The NSF is our one great hope at present.

	And if you think that somehow this leads to a totalitarian
police state, then we aren't talking in the same universe and please
don't post a follow-up to pursue that line of thinking.

	Note: Don't construe my comparison of uucp to NSFnet as
in any way being a denigration of uucp.  uucp is an enormous success
and a perfect example of a network that serves a particular need.

	Kent England, Boston University