🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ccfj.676148819@hippo> ccfj@hippo.ru.ac.za 
(F. Jacot Guillarmod) writes:

>This gets back to my original argument about the need for having an
>institutional or organisational culture that supports such things.  It
>is easy to follow the crowd and get support from other users if they are
>all using PC's, but how do you get bootstrapped into this if it is still
>standard practice to make use of say electric typewriters?  

I believe email and news will only penetrate where the use of PCs for
wordprocessing has already penetrated. That however will be quite
extensive as they are both cheaper and more convenient than
electric typewriters. Continuing use of electric typewriters in
developing countries is merely transient. (If nothing else, they
will run out of spare parts before long :-)

>A sort of 'email/news engine' - just plug it in, connect your telebit
>netblazer to the satellite transceiver and you have instant TCP/IP to
>the Internet?  It's definitely feasible right now, if a bit costly.

No need for a satellite transceiver and netblazer to achieve TCP/IP 
to the Internet. Just the PSTN, and an ordinary Trailblazer or other high speed 
modem (perhaps even a relatively cheap fax modem with lots of forward error
correction, though the high cost of international calls makes it more
economical to lay out the capital for a better modem). People are doing
it now with FidoNet and UUCP to developing countries.

Satellites could dramatically reduce costs, especially for large
newsfeeds and there have already been extensive experiments with
SCPC satellite receivers that are just a PC card that costs about
as much as a high speed modem for a 9600 bps downlink. (Uplink may
as well still be via PSTN). However satellites are not essential
for getting started.

Nor is TCP/IP internet access - batched file transfers are adequate for
email and news. If TCP/IP internet access WAS required it can be 
achieved much more cheaply than with a netblazer, just using SLIP or PPP
software on an ordinary PC.

>As an aside, it might be productive to spin off a separate thread on
>proposals for how something like this could be put together using
>existing technology.  Costing would be interesting.

Useful for IMPROVING things in that area, but feasability has
ALREADY been proved. The problems are in administering the email
and news system GIVEN an adequate communications link.

>Email still suffers from its heritage as something that started in high
>tech computer shops, where networking was a means of interactively using
>a mainframe to run some or other program, and only comparatively
>recently branched into news/mail - the syntax and mechanisms still show
>traces of IBM 360 Job Control... with the support infrastructure that
>had to go with it.
>
>What you are looking for is the next step up the evolutionary ladder.

EXACTLY. But it isn't just a matter of "heritage". Email is STILL
primarily used where technically oriented sysadmins or sysops are
readily available and therefore ease of use and especially ease
of administration have not been critical issues. They immediately
become critical issues when you want to move outside academic and
computer literate circles.

>And don't say X.400!

X400 in no way prescribes the user or system administrator
interfaces and in that sense is irrelevant. Current implementations
are even more "research" oriented than ordinary email and add the
confusion of gatewaying between X400 and internet standards.

However I believe that by providing a well defined and reliable
underlying message handling service and directory service, with 
all the functionality needed, X400 and X500 certainly will play
a key role in the next step up the evolutionary ladder. At least
in designing improved User and Administrator interfaces we will
have a clear specification of precisely WHAT the interface is
interfacing TO.

>Communication via 'sneaker-net' - i.e. physical transport of floppies,
>is a possibility, sure, but it imposes other requirements - efficient
>courier services for example, and lacks the immediacy of the type of
>discussion we are now having.  You may as well write a letter.

That severely limits the usefulness of email without telephones.
But it still leaves open considerable possibilities for news without
telephones. "You may as well publish a circular and send it to
everyone who might be interested" is the alternative option to newsgroups 
and transporting floppies may well be more attractive. Even a delayed
one way news feed by airmailed floppies and tapes could be useful
as a source of technical information for developing countries.
Supplemented with email for asking questions it could be very
useful indeed.

>>>- support from internal management or administration for the concept of
>>>  WAN, for footing the bill or dealing with those who will be footing
>>>  it.
>
>>Desirable, but PCs sneaked in behind the backs of unsupportive management and
>>actively hostile MIS departments. If the PCs and telephones are in
>>place, and modems are reasonably cheap, why couldn't email and news
>>software as convenient as typical wordprocessors and spreadsheets
>>infiltrate despite unsupportive management too?
>
>Because an international newsfeed, even a small one, costs lots of
>money. :-(  It is impossible to 'hide' such costs in any realistic way.
>Also, look at the recent furore as regards the pros and cons of BITFTP
>closing down - there are plenty of guys in the developed world who can't
>handle the type of running costs involved.

International email is significantly cheaper than international airmail
(let alone the costs of telex and fax that are widely used in developing
countries). Inwards news is more expensive but the costs are not
dramatic compared with the benefits. Internal phone costs within
developed countries are so low that often there are no proper
administrative arrangements to minimize and share costs by properly
organizing feeds. Since international phone costs are several times
higher (though not an order of magnitude higher), such arrangements
become more important for developing countries and satellite
broadcasting becomes more attractive. But it is always possible
to add some news whenever it is possible to use email. There are
lots more situations that cannot handle the administrative costs
of providing a sysadmin or sysop than situations where the
telephone costs are prohibitive.

>Well, both you and I see the benefits, but isn't this tinged (and here
>my heritage as a South African comes into play) by a desire to impose
>something 'worthwhile' in a western sense on countries and people that
>quite possibly have a different world view?  Are we justified in
>assuming that say Zaire would in some way be a better place because it
>had network access?  I know that this is straying from the point a bit,
>but perhaps it is not totally unrelated to the reasons why many
>developing countries don't seem to be too bothered.

If they don't want it they will reject it. Only a westernized
elite can benefit initially but offering access cannot be less
justified than neglecting to offer it. Colonialist/imperialist
railways and schools were a "good thing". There is a wide
consensus that providing international telecommunications to
developing countries is a "good thing" (and there are even
special Intelsat discounts etc to encourage this). Adding
email and news seems a trivial extension. News can
become something like providing access to current serials
and libraries which are also generally regarded as a
"good thing". A general discussion on Eurocentrism and
cultural relativism etc probably belongs elsewhere. If such a 
discussion were unavoidable here, I would take a position similar to
Marx in "The British Rule in India".

>The way networking is now, you have to 'pay your dues' and serve an
>apprenticeship by struggling to get to grips with a wide variety of
>technological and political odds and ends, the end result being the
>ability to conduct this discussion in this forum.  But that is part and
>parcel of computing evolution.  A few years down the road, it may well
>be possible to have a turnkey 'email engine' that can be plunked down
>anywhere in the world without requiring local system and network
>administration - but it will, of neccessity, be using a different
>paradigm to the one we are using now.

It will be using the paradigm we are constructing now.

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