Re: History means "Before self" LONG (was RE: legality of web links t o articles?

[Kelley <kwalker2 -at- gte -dot- net>]

you know, that's the second time today that I've been mistaken for a 
whipper snapper. The first time, i was grateful, because they saw my face. 
This time it's pretty insulting. I don't think it's much your business, but 
I'm not a young whipper snapper in the grand scheme of things.  I remember 
(and was old enough to think it mattered and know why) when Reagan ran for 
office the first time, and lost. I can remember my father learning COBALT 
in community college classes before TCP was a glimmer Vint Cerf's eye. In 
fact, I was the first girl to take a computer class in high school. I was 
scared witless by people who seemed to know what the hell this computer 
thingy was because their parents were professors at the local state college 
or worked for IBM or Smith Corona (used to make type writers!). And that 
was before DOS and APPLE.
:)

That said, the debates I'm referring to are, again, documented by Joseph 
Turow in _Breaking Up America_ where he talks about how CASIE 
influenced  the direction to take the "Information Superhighway". CASIE 
convincingly argued that we would go down the path of socialist horrors if 
we let the government fund it. You see there was this big argument that the 
govt should subsidize the ordinary users access to the Internet. Otherwise, 
acces to info would cost money, more money than the poor could afford, or 
so argued the defenders of democracy. Against them, CASIE stepped forther, 
with an alternative model, that of the "traditional visual 
media"--Broadcast and Cable TV. (Shoot, kids, I remember when I couldn't 
change the channel on the TeeVee without turning the DIAL and waking up 
dad, who'd mumble, "I was watching that. Yes! with my eyes closed."

CASIE: "business competition and advertising, not government taxes and 
subsidies, were the best ways to ensure that Americans could afford to 
access to the information superhighway." Congressional testimony and other 
documents re: the Information Superhighway.

Yes, I know that vast portions of the Web are not ostensibly commercial. 
But, they are underwritten by commercial enterprises. People spend their 
free time building things, maintaining sites, etc. because someone pays 
their salary so they can eat and have money to fund their Web-based hobbies 
their pariticpation in the associational orgs like the W3C.

I know this personally. I run an email list and a Internet resource and it 
can only exist because I and my colleagues have money and free time, as do 
the others who do it so that others can benefit from our life's passions. 
But, someone has to pay for that $25.00/month for the site, the 
registration fees for the domain names, buy the software and hardware, look 
at the logs periodically to make sure things are cool securitywise, as well 
as the time and effort it takes to maintain all that information we've 
gathered for others to use freely. I'm happy to do it, but it costs money.

kelley

At 05:32 PM 2/12/02 -0500, KMcLauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com wrote: