At 06:41 PM 1/30/99 -0500, you wrote:
>At 6:43 PM -0500 1/30/99, Bret A. Fausett wrote:
>
>Not all investments can be measured in money or commercialism. If the non
>commercial interests hadn't made the Internet such a desired venue for
>communiciation, and if governments, academic institutions, private, and
>commercial entities hadn't made committments to the medium, there would BE
>no e-commerce. Yet that fact is consistantly left out of proposals for
>constituencies. There is no provision for public interest, universal
>access interests, schools and universities, freedom of expression, and
>several other important constituencies that are left out of every proposal
>(although it has been talked about in the DNSO.org draft, although it is
>being shot down as "brought up too late" when in fact it has been brought
>up time and time again over the years).
Can't speak to the latter point -- uh, maybe I'm a "clueless newbie!" --
but on the rest of it truer words were never spoken. In the several years
that I've been on the net, I've seen the amount of scientific research
available grow geometrically: I can research a topic in an hour now
that used to take me days. There is endless medical information
available as well -- diluted with tons of medical garbage such as the
latest urban legend that aspartame causes Alzheimer's because it
has formaldehyde in it -- but still useful if one looks carefully at the
entity that's doing the posting. The net got started for the purpose
of exchanging research information, and anything done to it that
would harm that fundamental advantage to a free society in any way
-- commercial interests be damned -- would represent a distinctly
counter-evolutionary trend. We all have a responsibility to protect
the true worth of the net -- and if any of our barely postpubescent
slam-bammers in this group think I'm being arrogant about that,
well, stuff it.
Bill Lovell
>
__________________________________________________
To receive the digest version instead, send a
blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To SUBSCRIBE forward this message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNSUBSCRIBE, forward this message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Problems/suggestions regarding this list? Email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
___END____________________________________________
