A Cyberspace Independence Refutation

[Ed Carp]

On Mon, 12 Feb 1996, Dave Emery wrote:

> 	A lot of people forget the basic truth that the net is based
> almost entirely on physical communications facilities owned for the most
> part by huge corperations that have deeply incestuous relationships with
> the political power structure and very little interest in preserving the
> self important dreams of a few members of a self selected net "elite".  
> If ordered to pull the plug they will, and cyberspace as we know it will
> evaporate overnight.
> 
> 	And there is essentially no possibility of practical alternative
> communications facilities becoming available - aside from the titanic
> capital costs of creating such, most of the resources required such as
> radio spectrum, orbital slots and rights of way are tightly controlled by
> the entrenched corperations that operate the present facilities. 

> 	Unfettered, uncontrolled, uncensored  net access to anything
> like  the current wide cross section of the great washed, upper income,
> upper education sector of the population reached by the current
> Internet is a short term historical accident - there are too many
> powerful groups challenged and threatened by such for this period of 100
> flowers to last. 

Well, that's the way the net is *now* - but it wasn't always so.  I 
remember the days when the net was composed of a *lot* of point-to-point 
UUCP connections eventually winding up at the backbone.  People could be 
many hops away from the backbone and still have email and news access.  
True, there was no such thing as the web, nor TCP/IP, but we *did* have 
connectivity and communications.  If the Feds pulled the plug on the 
backbone, I can see that there are a lot of people who would drag UUCP 
and pathalias out of the closet, and the UUCP Mapping Project would live 
again (hams have their own backbone are would be not as severely affected 
by the backbone going away).

Not that it wouldn't be hard - but it's doable.
--
Ed Carp, N7EKG    			Ed.Carp at linux.org, ecarp at netcom.com
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"Past the wounds of childhood, past the fallen dreams and the broken families,
through the hurt and the loss and the agony only the night ever hears, is a
waiting soul.  Patient, permanent, abundant, it opens its infinite heart and
asks only one thing of you ... 'Remember who it is you really are.'"

                    -- "Losing Your Mind", Karen Alexander and Rick Boyes

The mark of a good conspiracy theory is its untestability.
		    -- Andrew Spring