Netizens-Digest Wednesday, October 4 2000 Volume 01 : Number 367 Netizens Association Discussion List Digest In this issue: [netz] Responding to Vint Cerf's view of the future of the Internet [netz] an important development with usenet ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2000 14:30:24 -0400 (EDT) From: ronda@panix.com Subject: [netz] Responding to Vint Cerf's view of the future of the Internet This was a response to a post of Vint Cerf and it would be good to hear some discussion about the issues raised: vint cerf wrote: >Internet has the capacity to become a primary infrastructure >for communication during the 21st century, overtaking the >telephone and absorbing the mass media. Interesting that you claim it has the capacity to be a primary infrastructure for communication, when it hasn't yet demonstrated that it can be a primary infrastructure for interactive computer facilitated human-to-human communication which is available to all. This issue is raised at the US Dept of Commerce NTIA online conference in Nov. 1994. Would access for all to send email be the priority of the development, or would access for high end users to do video be the priority. (See http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/ chapters 11 and 14) What is the social-technical goal of the policy of Internet development and how can it be reached? At the NTIA online conference a number of people argued that getting everyone online with email access, and Usenet and a browser was the step toward further development. Then those users could be involved in determining what the next step should be. There is almost universal access to telephones in the US. By replacing the telephones with an Internet infrastructure which not all have access to, there is something that can be lost. I went to a presentation two weeks ago that demonstrated that home users in the US in a large part still depend on phone access for their Internet access, while corporations depend more on other forms of access like cable modem and satellite etc. And that there are real problems getting dsl and even cable modem access to people and working out the industry structure involved with doing this.( Even David Farber who is now Chief Technologist at the FCC in a mailing list post recognized that there is concern at the FCCC that the problems represnted by Microsoft's development not be repeated with the development of the Internet. ) Also the presentation referred to a recent FCC report about access and pointed out that the FCC claimed they had no way at this point to determine what was happening with access and who was being reached. That they used I think zip codes to measure access to see if anyone in a zip code had access, in their report, and that might be a corporation with satellite access. That the very agency with the authority to understand what is happening in the US at least is having a very difficult time and that is because the situation is a can of worms. In general it seems that in the US corporations are encouraged to have access, while there is less support for the public to have home access. In the US the way universal phone access was achieved was that business use was to subsidize home and local use. That meant that businesses benefited as there was a good communications system they were part of. Vint, there seems no recognition on your part that there might be one goal that MCI or other corporate entities would seem to benefit from, but that there is a larger social question that needs to be raised to show that in fact there will not be the benefit that is being proclaimed despite even the best of a corporations intentions. This is the problem of putting social development into corporate hands. In a communications infrastructure, the more people who are linked the more that infrastructure is of social utility. That is why the telephone system in the US has been a great benefit to the society. But the development of this system requied a research entity, Bell Labs, and regulation over the entity to provide that the social goal was being met. The US telephone infrastructure grew up under public and social obligations and laws that required that it meet social not "market" objectives. The "market" it turns out is a poor architecture for a human computer communications infrastructure. For example, the issue of interactivity is a vital issue with regard to a communications infrastructure. If people can't communicate by the infrastructure, if they mainly are the receiver of the communications of the corporate elite, then what kind of communications infrastructure is it? Television and video are not interactive in general. To connect telephone and the interactive aspects of the Internet (which seem to be waning rather than increasing) with an infrastructure designed to include television and video, has important social implications. Will the one way pipe of television be what dominates the infrastructure? Will the copyright desires of commercial content providers be what the infrastructure emphasizes? What about the public and intellectual contributions to the Intenret, Can an infrastructure designed without the participation of the folks who don't have a commercial self- interest be an infrastructure that provides for the needed protection for the public and intellectual contributions from the bottom up? The Internet was developed as an interactive resource sharing infrastructure, and the interactivity was built into the development early on, with the development of time sharing. The Internet wasn't created from whole cloth. It built on the interactive development that had been very carefully and wisely recognized as the first step to build the human-computer form of "mixed" system that was recognized as crucial for a socially and technically beneficial form of computer-communications system development. There are those rushing to replace this with a different form of computing as an article in the May 2000 issue of the Communications of the ACM proclaimed, an article that declared an end to the Licklider human-computer symbiosis paradigm. (The article was by Dave Tennenhouse, formerly of DARPA and now at Intel) >I wish it could be maintained as a neutral infrastructure - >in the sense that any telephone can call any other. (...) >The Internet as an infrastructure has to be supported and >maintained and that costs money. At present, the best engine >for achieving that is to make Internet a commercially supported >vehicle. Interesting. Originally the tcp/ip protocol was created to make it possible for dissimilar networks to communicate. The onus for the system as on the dissimilar networks. It was a peer to peer design with the protocol making it a metasystem. A piece of the infrastructure is the DNS system, a piece is the IP numbering system, and a piece is the protocol creation and development process and the way that is open to all. What is the infrastructure you are referring to? Are you not referring to any of what I have mentioned? Also the networks that make up the Internet, the users and their computers are all a part of what makes an Internet. The contributions of the users are part of what makes an Internet. And much of this is not commercially owned. So it seems you are claiming that ownership and control of much that is not commercial should be ceded to certain commercial entities. But to do so, not only would be harmful to the users and their computers and the networks that are part of the Internet, but more so, to the fundamental nature of the Internet. If you want to form a commercial network, why didn't you do so. Why did you take the public network and claim that it now has to be made into this commercialnet. The Internet is too important to many in the world and to the future of society to grant such a change in its nature. This is a public question that requires serious public discussion. Instead we get informed there is a decision by fiat and we see manifestations of that fiat by the creation and development of ICANN. > >Even national governments around the world could not >afford to pour into Internet the level of resources that the >private sector has provided and will likely continue to provide. The private sector has been granted a goose that lays golden eggs by the research and scientific communities, at least in the US. And the so called "private sector" now claims that they have created the goose. All the while it seems that they are intent on killing the goose. The users are paying for access, and paying lots of money in many cases. The so called private sector paying for this is actually the private sector reaping significant profits on their charges to users. The private sector is not donating to the public trough. So perhaps if you recognize that the Internet is not only what you view, but something that is viewed by many people around the world, and users in general view it from a very different perspective than the perspective you offer. Also, what are the consequences for a nation of ceding control over the communication infrastructure in their country to private corporations? Does a nation have a way to maintain its sovereignty if it gives over its communications infrastructure to something outside of its control? This was a question that Europeans had pointed out was an important issue they faced during WWII and the occupation of their countries. Can the people in a country have any chance to be treated as citizens by the government if that government has ceded control of the communications structure in that country to powerful corporate entities? A communications infrastructure is the nervous system of a nation. What about the government's obligation to provide for the public welfare and the national defense if it cedes the design and ownership and control of its communication infrastructure to corporations that are beyond its control? (...) >Internet is both a manifestation of and an instrument of >globalization. That is not always well-received as people >and cultures feel the effects of interaction well beyond >their historical boundaries. But we cannot put the genie back >into the bottle. That the world is interlinked in myriad ways >is fact and growing more so. A point of the creation of tcp/ip was, as I understand it, the recognition that it would provide a means of communication that respected national soverignty and political and administrative automomy of the networks that were being interconnected. This is the genie that you can't put back into the bottle. You can't now claim that the only way to have global communication is to put that communication into the hands of one coutnry or some powerful corporations that are trying to usurp political or administrative automomy or national soverignty. The fact that you didn't respond to my post about the fact that there were good reasons why the privatization of the NSFNET backbone shouldn't have happened, or that there was no response by the US government to the NTIA online conference, a discussion they asked citizens to participate in, shows that there is little reason to trust that commercial ownership and control of a communications infrastructure in any country. The commercial ownership and control of a communications infrastructure is a serious problem for the citizens of that country and for the users of the Internet around the world. >That we share spaceship Earth in complex and intimate ways >is also fact. But it doesn't seem that you or that companies like MCI recognize that the Internet has grown up as a "mixed system" where the user and the viewpoint of the user was important. where the users have been architectures of the network, that human-to-human computer facilitated communication has been the vital essence of the Internet for its users over a long period of time. This means that the users need to be intimitely involved in the decisions regarding the maintenance, growth and development of this unique and new kind of communications system. This means that your view of the future is very different from both the vision that gave birth to and guided the development of the Internet from its earliest days, and from the vision for the future of the Internet that many hold. We need public discussion and decisions that are made based on socially beneficially criteria, not merely some company's bottom line. >The Internet Society and the Internet Societal Task Force >see the Internet's beneficial potential and wishes to help >erode barriers to Internet access for everyone. At the same time, >ISOC members and ISTF participants also see the potential for abuse. >Through various means, they participate in the dialog surrounding >the protection of individual rights and interests as we make >use of this new medium. But its not a question of "individual rights and interests" The Internet is a social-technical construct. You have removed the social from its roots and its future development. Communication is a social process, and the technical means to make it possible need to be built from social considerations. Actually that is what Norbert Wiener realized with regard to the development of the science of communication and control which he called "cybernetics". And that is what JCR Licklider realized who set the seeds for the development of the Internet. And that is what you and Bob Kahn continued with your work on the development of the ARPANET and then the design for tcp/ip. But putting this developemnt now into commercial hands is a retreat from that social activity. This privatization of communications infrastructure process is based on an inaccurate model of what it takes to make a communications infrastructure. If you try to start from the notion of the "market" and the "competition" of the market, you don't end up with a communicaitons infrastructure. Perhaps you can build some form of a "commercenet" but not a general purpose socially beneficial communications system. And business as well as the home user as well as the citizen will be the losers as the "communication" is what is so important about the Internet for all these different users. >I think we cannot run away from or hide from the expansion of >the Internet so we need to embrace and help guide its evolution >into fruitful and constructive paths. I believe Vice President >Gore would find some resonance with these views. If you depart from the originating vision that has made the Internet possible, how do you think you can guide its evolution? And I realize that this is probably the kind of advice that Al Gore has received, and this is why it is so important that he not be dependent for advice on individuals with a commercial self interest in a particular policy. Perhaps this is why, at least in the US, there needs to be an Internet Commission, inside the US govenrment, so that those charged with studying and proposing future Internet policy be obvious, that they have an obligation to have means of welcoming and discussing the plans for the future with the public through online and other public processes, and that they be under obligation not to be working for a commercial entity, but instead recognize that they are government officials. Also this would mean that other countries would have a way of knowing who was considering what for the US portion of Internet development. Such an entity should build on the expereince of the cration of the institution that was the birthplace for the development of interactive computing and the Internet at the Information Processing Techniques Office (1962-1986) that was under ARPA. Perhaps at least in the US there is a need to have some means to open up the process of planning the future of the US portion of the Internet, and that would require the creation of a government Commission with social and technical and scientific expertise and obligations. I also saw a proposal for an international agency or commission that would be required to take on social and scientific and technical planning and research, in one of the conferences in the early 1960's that was considering communications research. These are perhaps ideas that need to be considered. But it is clear that to put the creation, maintenance, and future development of the communication infrastructure for countries round the world in the hands of a few corporate entities developing it as their commercial undertaking, is a serious problem for the public in the US and around the world and the users of the Internet. This is perhaps even a worse scenario than the World Bank or the IMF could conjure up. And it will be met with even greater resistance as much more is at stake. The Internet has been built on a different kind of development up until 1995. And it is this other kind of development that provides the basis for it to scale and grow and flourish. >Vint Ronda ronda@ais.org ronda@panix.com http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2000 09:52:27 -0400 (EDT) From: ronda@panix.com Subject: [netz] an important development with usenet Following was an important post that was on the community memory mailing list yesterday. It is about a petition to Deja News complaining about their removing the archive they maintained and made available of Usenet posts. Also I suggest people take a look at the petition as it includes peoples comments - and the importance they attach to Usenet and to it having a memory. And it would be good to figure out how to contribute to the effort to save the archives. The whole petition shows the sham of having to rely on the commercial world and business models for technical and social resources as important as an archive of Usenet. Ronda - ------------------------------- From: "John Stevenson, tranquileye.com" Organization: tranquileye.com Subject: [CM>] The Death of Usenet archiving? ______________________________________________________________________ Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________ I think the readers of this list might be interested in what appears to = be something of a crisis in the area of Usenet archiving. It would seem that Deja.com, formally DejaNews.com, is not longer making = available its archive of Usenet posts dating from 1995 to approximately = 1999. They claim that the situation is temporary, but I do fear that = they have used their hardware move as an excuse to discontinue what = might well be an unprofitable service. The Usenet community, such as it is today, has noticed this, and one of = the efforts underway is a petition that anyone may electronically sign: http://www.petitiononline.com/dejanews/petition.html As well, the OIdnews Usenet Archive, collecting many posts from 1981 and = 1982, seems to be down for good due to too much traffic: http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/index.html Finally, RemarQ.com has been purchased by CritialPath, turning their = Usenet access service commercial. I am not sure what level of archiving = they did, or if Supernews offers anything similar. I doubt it.=20 I understand that the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org) has a = substantial Usenet collection, but it is not open for mundane browsing = from what I can tell. All this leaves me with something of a sick feeling. While much of = late-1990s Usenet is junk, it has both practical and historical = significance. The notion that archiving Usenet is not commercially = viable does not bode well for saving other parts of the Internet's = history. I trust these few comments are germane to the list. John Stevenson ------------------------------ End of Netizens-Digest V1 #367 ******************************