On Fri, Nov 20, 1998 at 09:34:26AM -0800, Suzanne Stephens wrote:
> Isn't it amazing the changes in technology, the major paradigm shift in
> communications, that has happened just in the ten years since I was trying
> to whip those 5 1/4" floppies into submission?
Well said.
When I first got connected to the ARPAnet, the entire bandwidth
available to the university where I was working was roughly that
afforded by a 56K modem on a reasonably good phone line. We also
had to play by DARPA's rules, because otherwise our IMP would cease
being a useful piece of hardware. ;-) And there were not many of
us talking to each other, simply because there weren't many of us.
When we fired up Usenet with 300-baud modems (ooooh) and started
playing our own game, it was addictive. I thought that everybody
oughta have this stuff.
Now it's all happening. Just like Rose's dream is happening.
I always wanted to live at some point in the future: as a kid, I was
quite the space/astronaut fan, and watched every launch on TV, knew
the names of all the astronauts and which missions they'd been on,
the statistics of the rockets and spacecraft and all that. For a long
time, I lamented the fact that I was born in the 20th century,
not the 25th or 30th, because I want to go to the stars. Because I think
that's where we will go, *must* go, someday, or all this is for
nothing. (There's a beautiful speech about this that turned up,
of all places, on Babylon 5. The character uses that last phrase,
and enumerates the people who will be lost forever when the sun explodes
unless somehow we manage to preserve what we have of them: Lao Tzu,
Marilyn Monroe, Mozart, Winston Churchill, Descartes...)
I still wish I could come back for a day in 2498 or 2898, but that
seems rather unlikely at the moment. (And yes, I'd take the risk
that I might return to a dystopian future.)
But I spend less and less time worrying about not living in the future,
because I've realized that I can create the future. We are, I think,
just on the cusp of some major changes -- and while they're facilitated
by technology, they're not technological per se.
One of those is the open source software movement, which threatens
to turn the software industry on its head. Another is the impact of the
Internet on the political process. (Anybody else read the Slashdot
commentary on the role of the 'net in Jesse Ventura's election
as governor of Minnesota?) Yet another is the increasing reach of
telecommunications around the world thanks to wireless and satellite
technology. And still another is increasing economic interdependence
of nations around the world. (Is there really such a thing as
"the US economy" anymore? Or is that like saying "the US oxygen supply"?)
Maybe it's just a flashback to my activist days, but from here, I see
the powers that be getting awfully worried. All of the things I mentioned
above bring participatory democracy and access to information within
the reach of nearly everyone on the planet. This is major bad news
for the suppressive or the greedy or the isolationist, or for
pretty much anyone whose grip on social, political or economic power
depends on a *lack* of participatory democracy and access to information.
Blue-sky techno-hippie babble from a pony-tailed Unix geek? Could be,
although I have Jonatha Brooke on the CD player, not Humble Pie, and
I don't wear an earring. I guess we'll see over the next decade of so.
Rich Kulawiec / [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] / 610-459-0356
The best results require the best tools: Unix/Linux consulting done here.
^
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