Internet, that thing we use to kill time and annoy our friends, family and an occasional stranger, has turned 40. A party was held at UCLA for the occasion. Surprisingly, Al Gore was not invited.
You know, Microsoft's marketing department should really get kicked in the teeth for not releasing Windows 7 on the 29th and having it tie in somehow. Oh, and happy birthday Internet, may your series of tubes enjoy another 40 years of reduced workplace productivity.
So if internet access becomes an inalienable human right, does that mean I won't have to pay my cable company anymore?
No.... that means that *I* will pay *YOUR* cable company. And *YOU* will pay *MY* cable company. But the IRS will collect the money.
You have an inalienable right for pursuit of happiness. But you still pay the girl on the brass pole.
Here's an interesting twist... what is now considered a great force for democtratization was created by the DoD to make a communications infrastructure that was robust in the face of nuclear war! (That's why it's web based with lots of interconnected nodes). For the free marketers, it was also created by government grants to fill a need that wasn't being served by the commercial marketplace... will the wonders never cease? Matt
The things people now think of as a right are getting ridiculous. I was listening to a guy complain that he had a right to electricity and shouldn't have to pay for it..... only in the U.S. And true Dr. Obnxs, the internet was created by the military with government funding, but it's development into what it is today was a result of it being opened up to the free market. Few who support the free market would say there shouldn't be military development, it's one of the few areas the government is constitutionally obligated to meddle in.
I know... it was just a jab at the "lassaiz-faire" marketers... FWIW, there are lots of areas that are neglected by the market that have great pay off, some with military applications (things funded by DARPA) and some commercial (SBIR stuff). Another related jab. The WWW was developed by a physicist at CERN who needed a better way to transport data across what was then lots of different network formats! Even more tangentially, I was listening to him get interviewed by Terry Gros on NPR, and he was talking about the Lynx browser (text only, hyperlinks were bold I think... It's been a while). He was talking about using the web on 300 baud modems and the like. She just had no clue... "OMG! How long did it take to download a page with all those picture adds?" "There were no pictures. There were no adds. It was just text." "But every time I go to AOL or something there are lots of pictures, it must have taken forever." He let it drop to go onto the next subject.... I thought it was pretty funny... Matt