Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!isishq!p101.f162.n221.z1.FIDONET.ORG!Doug.Thompson From: Doug.Thompson@p101.f162.n221.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Doug Thompson) Newsgroups: comp.society.futures Subject: Re: Electronic Banking Message-ID: <2491.248B4D5C@isishq.FIDONET.ORG> Date: 5 Jun 89 13:56:35 GMT Sender: ufgate@isishq.FIDONET.ORG (newsout1.25) Organization: FidoNet node 1:221/162.101 - ISIS International , Waterloo ON Lines: 112 In a message of <18 May 89 10:53:03>, writes: > > In article <2329.246511C8@isishq.FIDONET.ORG> Doug.Thompson@p101.f162.n221.z1.F > (Doug Thompson) writes: > > > >"Away from the terminal". When am I away from the terminal? At the > same >points when I'm away from any paper. In the car, walking down > the street, >at the beach. Otherwise my portable with its built-in > 19200 BAUD modem >is with me, and it's a whole lot lighter than > the same 44Megabytes of data >would be on paper. > > > > It may be lighter, but is it cheaper? I have no qualms about losing > a newspaper or a paperback, even a hardcover is bearable, but losing > a portable > PC (or spilling a beer in it :-) would be as bad as having my entire > library go up in smoke. It has to be portable and _cheap_ to replace > paper. I'm not going to argue against the virtues of low-cost. But, think about the costs of putting 100Kb a day on paper. First you need a printer, and the good ones cost as much as the portable computer. Then you need paper, ribbons or chemicals, and you need time and labour to generate the output. Of course, you need paper too. Given that the data originates in machine readable form and is transmitted in machine-readable form, the "cost" of protecting my portable against loss by leaving it home, and printing out all the data I might need, the cost measured in time, labour and supplies, is hugely greater than the cost of insuring the portable against loss - if you look at the costs over the course of a year, rather than the costs on the first day of operation. Then there is the fact that when I'm away from home and my computer, I can't *get* that data without either a: using the portable to suck it into the local hard disk (very quick, cheap, and convenient) or, having a staff member print out just what I want to read and send it to my by courier. Very expensive, slow and inconvenient. If I'm at a hotel with a FAX machine, I could have it faxed to me too, also slow, expensive and inconvenient, but not quite as bad as the courier. Now, tell me the portable is an "expensive" way to get at information. Of course there are up-front one-time capital costs, and there are maintenance, insurance and repair costs. But television sets cost a fair bit too, and also have repair and maintenance costs. Yet we think of broadcast TV as "free". Add a VCR, make that a colour TV, and the costs are comparable to those of portable computers. But we still think of the rental video as a "cheap" movie. You save your $7 movie ticket, the drive down-town, the parking fees, the gas and oil, the time . . . though you've spent thousands in hardware to accomplish those "savings". PLUS, you get a much wider selection of viewing material. The phone system we use also represents an incredible hardware investment. While my one minute call across the continent may cost 50 cents, I'm using billions of dollars worth of hardware, capital goods, and the labour of many people. So one of the "economic" realities we're dealing with here is that the cost can be reduced by spending money. That is, when you install appropriate hardware, you can slash operating costs. In the first week it's much more expensive. By the 100th week, you've broken even and by the 200th week you're ahead of the game. Meanwhile you have all the non-money advantages of convenience and reduced labour. And as for spilling beer on the keyboard, well I did spill coffee on one once, took it apart, washed it, dried it out, put it back together and it was fine. Now, if I'd spilled that coffee on a book, I'd never get the stain out :-). I had an employee once who spilled coffee with a great deal of sugar in it on an 8 inch floppy one Friday afternoon. By the time I found it on Monday morning, the floppy was encased in a brown, crystalline shell. I soaked it for a few hours in running water, opened the jacket and removed the inner acedate media, dried it, and the data was all recovered. Indeed, after taping up the jacket the disk seemed be none the worse for wear. Obviously there are different vulnerabilities when dealing with computers and computer media than other kinds of information storage. Overall, I'm not sure the computer media are inherently *more* vulnerable. We keep backups of computer data. The paper data cannot be backed up nearly so easily. It's less vulnerable, you argue. Well yes, it's less vulnerable to catastrophic loss through inadvertance or hardware failure. But it is just as vulnerable to fire, sabotage, tornado, etc. And, because it's much harder to back up, it is inherently more difficult to make the data really secure against loss. Multiple copies of electronic data are cheap and easy to make, transport, and store at multiple sites. Ever try printing out 200 Mb of data and put it in your safety-deposit box? Stone, however, is very durable. Anything you really want to be preserved should be carved in stone. Just ask archaeologists! Paper breaks down in time and you lose the data. I wonder how tape and disks endure through thousands of years? I wonder when some manufacturer will build a computer print that carves in stone? :-) :-) =Doug -- Doug Thompson - via FidoNet node 1:221/162 UUCP: ...!watmath!isishq!162.101!Doug.Thompson Internet: Doug.Thompson@p101.f162.n221.z1.FIDONET.ORG