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To: Joe NYC who wrote (166216)	6/11/2002 6:29:55 PM
From: tcmay	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Tim,...Excellent post....Joe " Thanks. There were many more points I could have included. Here are a couple: a. France's Minitel experience. In the 1980s the French technology planners decided that every household in France should have a subsdized network connection. A "one size fits all," much like proposals for a subsidized fiber system (though with the expected difference in bandwidth from then to now). The system was called Minitel. And it set France back many years. It squelched competing systems, it forced a standard which was inflexible, and it presumed a model for how French users would interact with it which was just plain brain-dead. (It presumed a model where Minitel would be used for "ordering groceries" and "making airline reservations." Minitel was crummy for doing what Americans were doing with their dial-up modems and PCs and was worse than crummy for using the Web.) b. If the idea of a nationally subsidized system is to make such systems affordable for me and thee, then just give us a tax cut instead. (Ah, but maybe the $2000 per taxpayer tax cut would _not_ be used to buy a fiber line connection. Gee, this says people want other things more than want the ability to download a movie in 17 seconds. We mustn't let people decide what to do with their own money!) c. Much is made of the importance of the original DARPA funding for the ARPANet. Well, there are counter-arguments. First, the technology of networks was advancing _anyway_. Second, the "hub and spoke" topology of the ARPANet is not necessarily such a great thing...a point to point system like the phone system might have been a better network model than the "central Internet Service Provider" model, a point John McCarthy made eloquently back in the mid-80s. Third, the government maintained control of what went over the Net for too many years. I shudder to think about a government-laid fiber system and what they would "allow" to go on it. Better that our traditional anarchic approach continue. --Tim May