Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!hubcap!gatech!ukma!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!millar.UUCP!bowles
From: bowles@millar.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Networks, who pays
Message-ID: <8811211611.AA20482@lll-crg.llnl.gov>
Date: 21 Nov 88 16:11:19 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 47


	From: lll-crg!bu-cs.bu.edu!kwe  (kwe@bu-it.bu.edu (Kent W. England))
	
	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.

This may be oversimplifying, but isn't the difference between uucp and
most of those things above the difference between batch and non-batch
processing? For example, library queries can be done batch, over a uucp-like
mechanism. (AT&T has two methods of access to its corporate libraries: you
either dial into the database machines or uucp specific requests. Yes, the
batch mode is U-G-L-Y, but it works.)

But uucp is point-to-point, though.

		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.

Admit, though, that in the past 7-8 years the educational world has been
largely what's produced "Usenet", such as it is.  We'll all agree that 7-8
years is a LONG time, but the educational (grass-roots) world can get SOMETHING
done.

What the educational community can't do is get into consumer's homes, with
new or modified services.  Corporations can - look at what cable TV has
done around the country; utilities can; the government can - but usually
doesn't.

	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.

I promise not to argue about who should pay, but I don't trust "the
private sector" any further than I could throw it. (And I don't trust
the U.S. Government either. What else is there? The phone company?)

	Jeff Bowles