9.13.1. Hype on the Information Superhighway
- It's against the law to talk abou the Information
Superhighway without using at least one of the overworked
metaphors: road kill, toll boths, passing lanes, shoulders,
on-ramps, off-ramps, speeding, I-way, Infobahn, etc.
- Most of what is now floating around the suddenly-trendy
idea of the Digital Superduperway is little more than hype.
And mad metaphors. Misplaced zeal, confusing tangential
developments with real progress. Much like libertarians
assuming the space program is something they should somehow
be working on.
- For example, the much-hyped "Pizza Hut" on the Net (home
pizza pages, I guess). It is already being dubbed "the
first case of true Internet commerce." Yeah, like the Coke
machines on the Net so many years ago were examples of
Internet commerce. Pure hype. Madison Avenue nonsense. Good
for our tabloid generation.
9.13.2. "Why is the National Information Infrastructure a bad idea?"
- NII = Information Superhighway = Infobahn = Iway = a dozen
other supposedly clever and punning names
+ Al Gore's proposal:
- links hospitals, schools, government
+ hard to imagine that the free-wheeling anarchy of the
Internet would persist..more likely implications:
- "is-a-person" credentials, that is, proof of identity,
and hence tracking, of all interactions
- the medical and psychiatric records would be part of
this (psychiatrists are leery of this, but they may
have no choice but to comply under the National Health
Care plans being debated)
+ There are other bad aspects:
- government control, government inefficiency, government
snooping
- distortion of markets ("universal access')
- restriction of innovation
- is not needed...other networks are doing perfectly well,
and will be placed where they are needed and will be
locally paid for
9.13.3. NII, Video Dialtone
+ "Dialtone"
- phone companies offer an in-out connection, and charge
for the connection, making no rulings on content (related
to the "Common Carrier" status)
+ for video-cable, I don't believe there is an analogous
set-up being looked at
+ cable t.v.
- Carl Kadie's comments to Sternlight
9.13.4. The prospects and dangers of Net subsidies
- "universal access," esp. if same happens in health care
- those that pay make the rules
+ but such access will have strings attached
- limits on crypto
-
- universal access also invites more spamming, a la the
"Freenet" spams, in which folks keep getting validated as
new users: any universal access system that is not pay-as-
you-go will be sensitive to this *or* will result in calls
for universal ID system (is-a-person credentialling)
9.13.5. NII, Superhighway, I-way
- crypto policy
- regulation, licensing
By Tim May, see README
HTML by Jonathan Rochkind