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-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 9:37 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Re: FW: Towards the Internet as a Global Public Good: A Seasonal Wish to One and All: Mike G. wrote: mg> http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/towards-the-internet-as-a-g mg> lobal-public-good/ It's hard to find good analogies or metaphors for the internet. But here's one: Compare Main Street -- a public place with private patches located along it -- with the mall. Because Main Street has a millennium or so of tradition as a public place, it's an ongoing struggle to impose one person's or entity's notions or rules. The mall is intrinsically private, striving egregiously for a bogus illusion of "public space". But the internet is intrinsically private because somebody with deep pockets has to provide all that cable, fiber, routers, servers, gateways and essential technical services. Originally, the internet was a congeries of private entities. The connections were ad-hocced from POTS and other phone lines. The "hosts" file was passed around informally before DNS. Gateways (such as that between Bitnet and the Unix/IP net) were volunteer efforts. But we're way beyond all that. Now that giant corporate entities are providing the pipes and valves and pressure regulators, (and thus control privately the connections -- mall-ify the streets) they mean to control and monetize anything that represents a significant revenue flow, suppress or externalize anything that costs. Someone once said, in response to some glowing proposal about colonizing near space with orbital biomes, "It would be like living forever in a Greyhound bus." I'm afraid that the western (or capitalist or "free markets and free elections") faction means to have the net be a virulently exfoliating version of Farcebook. The huge acceptance of that particular digital mall environment, (as well as of phone, tablet and e-reader tech that locks the user out of any meaningful control) suggests that they'll get away with it. Ed W. wrote: Ed> Interesting chart from today's Daily Reckoning. [Decline of US$'s value, so today's $ buys what 3 cents did in 1913.] Does that mean much unless you put median wage or family income or something similar along side? Ed> Isn't also the end of the world, according to the Mayan calendar? Ed> Somehow, I don't feel very cheerful. Hey, the worst thing about death, assuming it's not a protracted and unbearably painful one, is that you don't get to see how things turned out. If today is the end of the world, that will not be a problem. Cheer up. Tomorrow, the days (if any) will be getting longer. - Mike -- Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. /V\ [email protected] /( )\ http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
