Topic 29: Internet values and the future of network services By: Saturday working group (teluride) on Sun, Jul 25, '93 3 responses so far Co-chairs: Ken Klingenstein -- Univ. Colorado; chair of the FNC advisory council Lewis Branscomb -- Harvard Univ Kennedy School; P.I. of Information Infrastructure Project. As Internet becomes increasingly privatized, how to preserve the internet values? What are those values? Who will preserve them? 3 responses total. Topic 29: Internet values and the future of network services # 1: (teluride) Sun, Jul 25, '93 (00:23) 60 lines What are the culture values that should be preserved? 1) No charge for use? Charging by capacity makes it seem like it is free. Current practises do not encourage efficient use: 70% of file xfer at CU are uncompressed. Charging by capacity keeps the price close to real cost. And you don't pay for administering a charge per use. In New Zealand they hired US RBOCs to privatize and charge usage rate-- no life line. RBOCs want to apply the telephony model to networks. Will it work? (Not fair: phone companies do not usage price inthe local area, where most of the traffic is.) NETCOM and Delphi in fact are profitably offering Internet access for individuals. 2) Internet prices are not distance based. [But telephony prices are only weakly distance based.] 3) Network externalities: vital to both value and the eocnomics. Internet needs to grow an other two orders of magnitude before it is as economic as it could be. Costs: a) Last mile cost b) connect time and network cost. Colorado supernet is still $2-$3/hr. c) internet cost d) information cost. 4) Distinguish between the price of information and price of access. Shared free information: Paul Ginsberg set up an electronic journal, and does not charge for access, which runs thousands per hour of queries. But California is having to charge for university database access. 5) There is a collective value attribute of Internet; people don't use it for point to point communication alone: the sharing of information is a key value. This lies intermediate between point to point and broadcast. There is a form of knowledge externality in knowledge sharing. There is a selflessness in the way people collect and share information. 6) International security value of international communication. No way for things to stay secret. Unbounded by government. 7) Broadening network concept to video and other media: There are 2000 cable access centers: provide training and access to media services. They work in video because of how they got started. So they have no access to external sources of information. Contrast with public radio shows the limitations. 8) Preserving anonimity: One value of internet is the inability to identify appearance, ethnicity, etc. With video, now getting very cheap, you can see the people you talk to. 9) Internet gives us space to imagine something new. You could show your dog instead ofyour face. Must try to limit federal regulation that might deny new customs. 10) Absence of junk mail, ads, and oppressive commercialism. 11) Internet is egalitarian for those who are on it; it is elitist for those who cannot use it or do not have access to it. Topic 29: Internet values and the future of network services # 2: (teluride) Sun, Jul 25, '93 (00:23) 19 lines How to preserve the values we want: 1) One voice: partition the applications. Personal communications should be private and paid for by user; no reason scientists should have free phone service. Keep subsidies for scientific uses. Colorado supernet is already segregated, information access which should be subsidized, private uses should be paid by user. But ultimately the distinction will break down. 2) If there is created an alternative for E-mail that is better than that in Internet people would use it without having to segregate applications. 3) The view is expressed that if it is to truly be egalitarian it will have to be very close to "free". 4) Bottom line: If the values of Internet are not the values of society, there is no way to preserve them. Topic 29: Internet values and the future of network services # 3: David Kline (kline) Sun, Jul 25, '93 (08:00) 6 lines I worked for years on natural gas pipeline issues, and it occurs to me to wonder whether some of the economic tricks that have recently emerged for allocating gas pipeline capacity have useful analogies in the increasingly private information pipelines. Time of day rates are an obvious candidate; there are also lots of other, less familiar constructs from physical pipelines that could come in handy here. .