On Thursday, March 14, 2002, at 09:05 AM, Major Variola (ret) wrote: > At 07:25 AM 3/14/02 -0600, Jim Choate wrote: >> >> http://slashdot.org/articles/02/03/13/1940210.shtml?tid=95 > The Island of the Wireless Guerrillas > > > The irony of using wireless ethernet in Hawaii is amazing. As described > in > _Dream Machine_, the ethernet protocol evolved from an RF data net > developed in Hawaii. Ethernet's random back off after collisions was > first developed in this pre-internet data net. (Collisions are inherent > in a > broadcast medium.) > > And now history loops.. >
ALOHANet, or AlohaNet, as I recall. An experiment with packet radio. History loops in many interesting ways. The current WiFi/802.11b nets remind me more of FidoNet than anything else. Daisy-chains and local meshes, with wireless playing the role of phone lines. A good thing, though. (And, yes, we talked about the implications of this in the early days of the list, and even before. Wireless nets, uses for data havens (where nobody knows who is _receiving_), cross-border networks (San Diego to Tijuana, and back). Things may not be as bad as we sometimes think... As to metaphor of history looping, maybe we can say the Hawaii experience is being _telescoped_. I get a keck out of puns like that. --Tim May "The Constitution is a radical document...it is the job of the government to rein in people's rights." --President William J. Clinton
