Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!isishq!doug
From: doug@isishq.FIDONET.ORG (Doug Thompson)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Revolutions and Fidonet
Message-ID: <800.2393428F@isishq.FIDONET.ORG>
Date: 30 Nov 88 04:52:10 GMT
Organization: International Student Information Service -- Headquarters
Lines: 52


 RC>From: rjc@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley) 
 
 
In article <14578@mimsy.UUCP> anderson@secd.cs.umd.edu (Gary 
 RC>Anderson) writes: 
 RC>>How much security? Who pays? 
 RC>>How much access? Who pays? 
 RC> 
 RC>>Is it reasonable to use revenues collected from  
 RC>>poor families who have no 
 RC>>computers in order to finance a computer network  
 RC>>for relatively well off academics and business persons? 
 RC> 
 RC>The same could be asked about roads.  It turns out that it is in 
 RC>everyones interest to have decent roads since that makes it 
 RC>cheeper to transport goods.  The point is that it is not business 
 RC>people who would benefit so much as businesses and that shoud 
 RC>force prices down.  Of corse it is open to question whether that 
 RC>would offset the cost of the infrastructure.  
 
Well, roads and the post office present reasonable examples. A 
society, rich and poor alike, benefits from having such things. 
Yet users, through fuel taxes, vehicle taxes, postage stamps, 
etc., pay the bulk of the operating costs, based on amount used. 
 
Further, the cost of computers is steadily coming down, and a 
home computer is now in the price range of a major home 
appliance. Most poor people do manage to acquire refrigerators, 
television sets, etc., so I'm not so sure that we will long  be 
in a situation where one has to be rich in order to participate 
or make use of computer networks directly. 
 
Indeed, except for the fact that you need an expensive capital 
item to do computer communication, the real costs of moving text 
data today are much less than the real costs of moving text data 
through the post office. Thus, this should end up being a boon to 
poor people by reducing the marginal cost of communication.  
 
As for the capital goods, the basic computer and modem, I can see 
lots of reasons for a state to subsidize access for poor 
families. In the end, it's a whole lot more useful to all of us 
if everyone is connected. 
 
=Doug 
 


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