Who Needs the Internet?

A net vet explains why he no longer needs FTP, newsgroups, or other obsolete features

Richard Jennings

The Internet is obsolete. Everything I used to do on it I can do now with more modern technology. I would rather we have a telephone infrastructure that supports 28.8-Kbps modems--to speed up communications--and a national caller-ID service--to screen out the communications I don't want.

In my defense, I have been a reasonably active Internet user for the past 16 years. My original terminal was a 24-row by 80-column VDT, which was connected to a DEC PDP-10. It in turn had a direct connection, via an impish Interface Message Processor, to the Internet. My communications network, free to me, consisted of everything between the PDP-10 and the service provider. I reached out for three basic serv ices: mail, file transfer (FTP), and remote log-in (Telnet).

Back then, I used Telnet to access, for example, a symbolic mathematical program (Macsyma, hosted on a PDP-20 at MIT) and the Network Information Center data servers. These servers contained databases of phone numbers of people in the government and all kinds of technical reports about the standards implementing the Internet.

Today, Mathematica (far superior to Macsyma) resides happily on my notebook. My CD-ROM drive accesses databases that can print a map of your neighborhood. The technical reports are available on an inexpensive CD-ROM.

I used the Internet to share documents by logging in to remote systems to print remotely all over the country. Now my word processor prints to any fax machine in the world just as easily as it prints to my laser printer. After hours, it costs me about 10 cents a page in the U.S. The cost of faxing outside the country has also come down.

I used FTP to move files from repositories on unive rsity- or Department of Defense-supported hosts to local hosts. For example, I moved programs to format documents (Scribe), transfer files (Kermit), learn Lisp (XLisp), and format mathematical equations (TeX). No commercial equivalents to these programs existed at that time.

I also used the Internet to grab files from various archives, look at them, and then delete them to make space for the next batch. Now the data, especially images, is compressed (by a factor of up to 800) and is quickly accessible off my shelf in the form of personal CD-ROMs. Today, I can get more information on a CD-ROM than I can read in a year.

I used Internet mail to reach people who were always on the road, in the air, in meetings, or in their office with the phone disconnected "working" on their computers. Most of these people have cellular phones now.

I also subscribed to several newsgroups, which used to swamp our local hosts. Information contained in these newsgroups was critical to getting hardware and softw are from different vendors to work together and to keeping the resulting system operational.

But today, CD-ROMs, with software to help me find just the right bits of information, coupled with vendors' fax-back systems and BBSes for late-breaking insights give me the information that I previously acquired by prospecting the newsgroups. I do not need more information now. I do need time to digest it.

Newsgroups also provided interesting, if not always work-related, information (e.g., net.singles and net.bicycles). Sorting through all the electronic data available, even 10 years ago, took a lot of time. Today, I am willing to pay an accountable expert to winnow away the chaff, packaging and distributing the useful kernels to me in a form I can quickly absorb--a magazine or a newsletter.

It is important to acknowledge the contributions of federal managers to the Internet. When I was a government employee, any letter I wrote went through countless reviews. If I made a long-distance phone call, it was logged in. The Internet was an expressway bypassing the bureaucracy.

There was a time when the Internet did fill a void. That void has been filled with other products and services that now render the Internet obsolete. The clamor to revive the Internet with a massive and continuing government subsidy is without any sound support grounded in economic arguments.

To enable their computers to reach out to touch other computers, many people may need to believe in an Internet-like entity. I don't. I believe in a modem and a quality phone line.

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Richard Jennings is a retired Air Force Major living in Norwich, Vermont. If you want to reach him on the Internet, you'll have to send E-mail to editors@bix.com .