Among them, vote for government support of pure science that has no immediate "market" objective:
For engineers and scientists like Mr. Medin, who went on to be a co-founder of @Home Networks and is now trying to build a national wireless data network, the NSFnet experience provides a lesson about interplay between technology and government policy.
“In that era the government said, ‘Let’s experiment and move everyone forward,’” he said. “If you had waited for a market, it would never have funded an NSFnet.”
Also, yet one more reminder to the obstinate dolts who still accuse Al Gore of claiming he "invented" the Internet, without bothering to check their history:
(His actual oft-misquoted, contest-stripped claim was about "taking the initiative in creating the Internet" and "in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection" -- perfectly sensible language for what legislators are supposed to do and how government, corporations and legislation enabled the Internet to be something useful to all of us):
"Many of the scientists, engineers and technology executives who gathered here to celebrate the Web’s birth say [Gore] played a crucial role in its development, and they expressed bitterness that his vision had been so discredited.
Mr. Gore had been instrumental in introducing legislation, beginning in 1988, to finance what he originally called a “national data highway.”
“Our corporations are not taking advantage of high-performance computing to enhance their productivity,” Mr. Gore, then a senator, said in an interview at the time. “With greater access to supercomputers, virtually every business in America could achieve tremendous gains.”
Ultimately, in 1991, his bill to create a National Research and Education Network did pass. Funded by the National Science Foundation, it was instrumental in upgrading the speed of the academic and scientific network backbone leading up to the commercialized Internet.
“He is a hero in this field,” said Lawrence H. Landweber, a computer scientist at the University of Wisconsin who in 1980 made the pioneering decision to use the basic TCP/IP Internet protocol for CSNET, an academic network that preceded NSFnet and laid the foundation for “internetworking.”
Sadly, that doesn't make a good soundbite. It's easier to repeat the campaign commercial smear and misdirect it into language "the people can understand."
As you may have noticed, the site has changed. Sampa, the free-site host, did a version 2 of some sort.
Despite an FAQ that made it sound like allowing one's site to go through v.2 surgery would be okay, there were several flexibilities that surprisingly disappeared with the click of a button. (e.g. I cannot believe sidebars like this one are even narrower than before.)
And I'm told -- miraculously! -- that the conversion cannot be undone. Truth be told, I'm actually quite pissed. But free is free. Sampa has otherwise been good to me.
So I need to sort through site "features" to see how I can make do. Except that I don't have the time at the moment, in the middle of graduate classes and Lighthousehockey.com. (btw, I've removed that Lighthouse RSS feed so that you're not clogged with random Islanders hockey gibberish).
But I promise to touch up the accessories when I get a chance, and return to irregularly scheduled blogging.
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. They were getting together for a 20-year reunion, and they had some cool stories and thoughts to share.
Comments for "When the Internet was young"
February, 2008