Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!TCGOULD.TN.CORNELL.EDU!tom
From: tom@TCGOULD.TN.CORNELL.EDU (Thomas Vietorisz)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Networks, who pays (Really: Libertarian Soap Boxing on INFO-FUTURES)
Message-ID: <8811202306.AA09138@tcgould.TN.CORNELL.EDU>
Date: 20 Nov 88 23:06:34 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 31

>From article by webb@lll-lcc.llnl.gov  (J.J. Webb)
<4778@leadsv.UUCP>:
>  you know, as someone who subscribed to this group thinking that i'd
>  find some interesting discussions on the future of computers and
>  computing, i must say that all i see are the dogma armies battling...
>  now, as a stranger here, i ask, "does anyone have any serious
>  proposals for funding a `public' network?" 

	As another stranger, I second that. Too much sophomoric ideolo-
gizing, a generally disappointing level of information content. I am for
a public education and research network, but am willing to listen to
serious reservations about letting large organizations, especially the
government interfere with and control individual initiatives. The prob-
lem is that most of the benefits to any communication network, beginning
with the postal service way back, accrue to society as a whole. Even
from the most conservative free-enterprise point of view, user fees are
the wrong way to fund this kind of a service; economists deal with this
under the heading of "external economies" or "spillover effects". If fund-
ed by user fees, the system will be grossly underutilized.
	In the case of a national education and research network, a year's
study of markets and economic impacts financed by NYSERNet leads to the
conclusion that such a system can neither be self-generating nor self-
financing; yet it constitutes the indispensable infrastructure that is
required if the U.S. is to make the transition from the age of traditional
mass production to the information age, and stay internationally competi-
tive, especially vis-a-vis Asia. The cultural resistances are enormous, even apart fr
apart from the issue of public funding.
	All of this requires thoughtful and informed discussion, which
should not be drowned out by ideological din.

					T. Vietoriszz