From: Ed Carp <erc@dal1820.computek.net>
To: Dave Emery <die@pig.die.com>
Message Hash: 2520e2f3c7cb9147ee57b028d27bcc9db4ee6e4373ce1f1952455de1c29f6980
Message ID: <Pine.3.89.9602120919.A6693-0100000@dal1820.computek.net>
Reply To: <9602120707.AA08292@pig.die.com>
UTC Datetime: 1996-02-12 17:50:31 UTC
Raw Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 01:50:31 +0800
From: Ed Carp <erc@dal1820.computek.net>
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 01:50:31 +0800
To: Dave Emery <die@pig.die.com>
Subject: Re: A Cyberspace Independence Refutation
In-Reply-To: <9602120707.AA08292@pig.die.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9602120919.A6693-0100000@dal1820.computek.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
On Mon, 12 Feb 1996, Dave Emery wrote:
> A lot of people forget the basic truth that the net is based
> almost entirely on physical communications facilities owned for the most
> part by huge corperations that have deeply incestuous relationships with
> the political power structure and very little interest in preserving the
> self important dreams of a few members of a self selected net "elite".
> If ordered to pull the plug they will, and cyberspace as we know it will
> evaporate overnight.
>
> And there is essentially no possibility of practical alternative
> communications facilities becoming available - aside from the titanic
> capital costs of creating such, most of the resources required such as
> radio spectrum, orbital slots and rights of way are tightly controlled by
> the entrenched corperations that operate the present facilities.
> Unfettered, uncontrolled, uncensored net access to anything
> like the current wide cross section of the great washed, upper income,
> upper education sector of the population reached by the current
> Internet is a short term historical accident - there are too many
> powerful groups challenged and threatened by such for this period of 100
> flowers to last.
Well, that's the way the net is *now* - but it wasn't always so. I
remember the days when the net was composed of a *lot* of point-to-point
UUCP connections eventually winding up at the backbone. People could be
many hops away from the backbone and still have email and news access.
True, there was no such thing as the web, nor TCP/IP, but we *did* have
connectivity and communications. If the Feds pulled the plug on the
backbone, I can see that there are a lot of people who would drag UUCP
and pathalias out of the closet, and the UUCP Mapping Project would live
again (hams have their own backbone are would be not as severely affected
by the backbone going away).
Not that it wouldn't be hard - but it's doable.
--
Ed Carp, N7EKG Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com
214/993-3935 voicemail/digital pager
800/558-3408 SkyPager
Finger ecarp@netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key an88744@anon.penet.fi
"Past the wounds of childhood, past the fallen dreams and the broken families,
through the hurt and the loss and the agony only the night ever hears, is a
waiting soul. Patient, permanent, abundant, it opens its infinite heart and
asks only one thing of you ... 'Remember who it is you really are.'"
-- "Losing Your Mind", Karen Alexander and Rick Boyes
The mark of a good conspiracy theory is its untestability.
-- Andrew Spring
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