A Cyberspace Independence Refutation

[Decius]

> > 	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. 
>
> 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.  
>
VERY true. People who are getting on the net now assume it is a corporate 
medium created by government grants... but the INTERNET is not nearly the
extent of decentralized communications. Man, when I was in high-school 
NOBODY had legit internet access. If you wanted to reach out and touch 
systems on the other side of the planet you had to BREAK INTO a network 
to do it. Thats one of the most important reasons that hackers "cracked" 
into systems. It was an incredible rush to be able to use computers that
are on the other side of the globe and run by big corporations. So 
apparently out of reach for an American teenage slacker. We could see 
where this stuff was going, but the discourse wasn't on the net, at least 
for us, it was on BULLETIN BOARD SYSTEMS. Look at FIDOnet. Although a lot 
of FIDOnet sysops are the most anal people in the world, the network 
itself is truely an amazing thing. Any 13 year old kid can set up a 
BBS with a 286 and a cheapo modem. They can join the network and talk to 
people on the other side of the planet. They can't shut it down because 
there IS NO CENTRAL CONTROL AT ALL. Anyone can set up a system for $500 
and people can talk. They can network. The government can never shut down 
every BBS. They cannot possibly be aware of whats out there and noone is 
in control. They cannot stop people from setting up FIDO style networks 
unless they outlaw computers. Maybe not even then. They cannot control 
the free spread of information. Even if you don't like FIDOnet you can 
start your own network. I did. It was called ASKi/Shadownet (later, 
Iniquity Net) and it spread all over the globe. We had people polling for 
mail from Australia! We were just a handful of kids from nashville who 
wanted to talk about computer stuff. We built an international network. 
Anyone can do it and it cannot be stopped. Even if the Internet gets 
overrun by corps and governments, and the WWW becomes the only service, 
the revolution is not over. The web is a transition. Once the Web gets 
all the TV heads on computer networks, they will slowley discover what 
networking REALLY is, what discourse REALLY is, what decentralization 
really is, what freedom of information really is. With BBSs and crypto 
technology, noone can stop the free spread of information. The Christian 
Riech has lost its war before it has even begun.     


-- 
        */^\*  Tom Cross AKA Decius 615 AKA The White Ninja  */^\* 
                    Decius at montag33.residence.gatech.edu

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