On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 3:27 PM, Nathan McCorkle <[email protected]> wrote:
> IMO efficiency becomes /more/ important with limited bandwidth. I've > been hearing for years that European countries have far more bandwidth > than the U.S. does... but for the average person I still don't see why > that matters at all. What are people doing that they NEED more than > 512kbps/1Mbps (again, common people, who mostly do just stream cat > videos and text documents)? COMFORT is much different than NEED. > "640 K ought to be enough for anybody!" -Not Bill Gates Really, for what? > Personal communications, telecommuting (commuting is stressful and a waste of time/fuel + contributes to climate change), small/home business development, lower barriers to general economic and technological development, education (MOOCs, etc) especially for people in remote areas and those unable to afford regular tuition, telehealth/telemedicine (remote diagnosis, etc), better government services, general quality of life improvements, etc. Also, a higher degree of freedom and privacy (self-hosted stuff). And lastly: applications that haven't been invented yet. If broadband is frivolous, why aren't we all still using 56K dialup?
_______________________________________________ dorkbotpdx-blabber mailing list [email protected] http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/dorkbotpdx-blabber
