Comments from P.A., please excuse the cross postings in advance. ====================================== Ronda and John Hauben are citizen activists out on the Net. ;^} You most often see their posts on Netizens-L. They jointly have a really good grasp on what is and what isn't... Worth checking out some of their links if you aren't up on the good ole days of pre glommed up Internet. Everyone fighting for a piece of the pie: the taxers, greedy monopolies, people without vision, short term pocketed money without concern for the diversity of all people. The beginning of the free flow of information. The discussion begins via ARPA. The specter of it being taken away, out of the reach of the average individual too much to bear. BTW I have their permission to forward their posts. They both believe in discussing ideas... the free exchange of information... to keep the global human/woman face of the Internet conversation alive. Paramount! Reverse your faulty ruling Commissar Kennard! Keep the global conversation alive for all. Reasonable, accessible, diverse.... And now a little history snippet or two from the Haubens... ______________________________________________________________________ Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________ So there was quite a vision that developed and was articulated among people on the early mailings lists. My papers documenting this are at http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers And chapters in our book "Netizens" document this as well. <major snip> >What of the entity and its class that many considered the real enemy in >the old days, namely AT&T? It may be hard to recognize in these >post-1985 post-breakup days that AT&T and the whole PTT dedicated-circuit >centralized-control government-mandated properly-constituted >national-delegation mindset (with which ISO-OSI was in tune) >was what just about everyone (ARPANET, USENET, UUCP, FidoNet, etc.) >was reacting against. <another major snip> Bell Labs was *no* enemy, but to the contrary made it possible for the Unix pioneers to develop Unix, made the creation of the transistor possible etc. And AT&T as a regulated entity was a good thing, not a bad thing and it made Bell Labs possible. The problem with the PPT's as far as I can understand is that they don't have a research arm like Bell Labs to support them doing the forefront research that would make the most modern facilities possible. And implicit in the regulated AT&T regulation was the requirement that they have the most advanced infrastructure, which required their support for Bell Labs basic research. We've lost that now in the U.S. (I have a discussion from Usenet about this that folks may find interesting at my web site http://www.ais.org/~ronda/discussion.txt ) <yet another major snip> >The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide, 1990 >http://www.mids.org/books/matrix/index.html >The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System, 1989 >http://www.mids.org/books/bsd.html >``Haiti, Deja Vu'' >http://www.mids.org/mn/712/reht.html >``Interview with Esther Dyson, Chair of ICANN'' >http://www.mids.org/mn/903/icann.html >RFC 1958, ``Architectural Principles of the Internet'' >ftp://ftp.internic.net/rfc/rfc1958.txt [Interesting reads from some very interesting Netizens if you wax that way at all.] -- P.A. ____________________________________________________________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------- Join The NEW Web Consultants Association FORUMS and CHAT: Register Today at: http://just4u.com/forums/ Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants Give the Gift of Life This Year... Just4U Stop Smoking Support forum - helping smokers for over three years-tell a friend: http://just4u.com/forums/ To get 500 Banner Ads for FREE go to http://www.linkbuddies.com/start.go?id=111261 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
