Re: Which side are you on?

[Tice Deyoung <deyoung () ARPA MIL>]

David,


     Apparently the director of the 21st Century Project doesn't understand
how the Internet works.  While the "introduction of the masses" will cause
certain things to happen, which will clearly cause major changes in the
Internet, the medium is flexible enough to absorb these influxes and go on.
Unlike television, the Internet is truly interactive.  Not just what do
you want to buy, see, choose from a list (as those selling video on demand
or netmarketers are trying to tell us), but total freedom to go where and
when you want.  To download huge amounts of data, as well as upload your
comments, papers, images whenever you want to whomever wants to
communicate.  No, the Internet will not go the way of non-interactive
television, but will adapt, change and evolve.  However, the Internet as we
knew it is gone, but a different net is here.  Like all things, the
Internet was a step along the way, something to be fondly remembered. Those
of us who were around when the ARPANet was turned off also think back
fondly of it.  Forgetting the slow speeds, the many times the overload
would bring it to it's knees, the irritation when it would crash during an
important experiment; we only remember the excitement of communicating
across the country, of being able to send and receive information anywhere
there was a phone and a modem.  Yes, the Internet is dead,  LONG LIVE THE
INTERNET!


Tice


At  6:46 PM 3/31/95 -0500, Dave Farber wrote:
> WILL FLAMES BURN DOWN THE INTERNET?
> In a discussion of the phenomenon of "flaming," the director of the
> 21st Century Project at the University of Texas (Austin) suggests
> that "the Internet may be on a path similar to that followed by
> television and other communications media:  the introduction of the
> masses so alienates  well-educated, cosmopolitan people that they
> abandon the medium or resort to a specialized class of cultural
> material that advertises its disdain formass tastes."  (The New
> Republic 4/10/95 p.15)
>
> from Edupage