From: Adam Shostack <adam@bwh.harvard.edu>
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 94 12:03:19 PST
To: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Subject: Re: personal manifesto (comments appreciated)
In-Reply-To: <199403280847.AAA03880@mail.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <199403282002.PAA17903@bwface.bwh.harvard.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


	I don't think the net will ever be a huge monolithic entity.
I suspect it will continue to be very much like the phone system.
There are PBX's and large switches, some in and some out of the US.
Some are owned by governments, some by schools, some by large
companies.  There is no monolithic "phone system," but many.  Almost
no one thinks about them.

Adam


Tim wrote:

| John Blair says he welcomes comments and criticism, so here goes:
| 
| > 1)	My vision of the Net is utopian, or I would not spell it as I do, 
| > with a capitol N.  While the most likely possibility is that the Net 
| > will simply mirror current society, a Net of this structure would fail 
| > to realize its potential as an agent of social change.
| 
| I often use the term "the Net" as well, but perhaps this usage is
| skewing our thinking in the very direction we mostly despise: the
| creation of a monolithic entity,  as epitomized in "the" National
| Information Infrastructure. Perhaps we should be thinking in terms of
| "many nets," "many communcations channels." Come to think of it,
| "cyberspace," though sometimes hackneyed (hackerneyed?), captures it
| best, at least for me.

-- 
Adam Shostack 				       adam@bwh.harvard.edu

Politics.  From the greek "poly," meaning many, and ticks, a small,
annoying bloodsucker.

Have you signed the anti-Clipper petition?