Internetasaurus?

In ``Who Needs the Internet?'' (January Commentary), is Richard Jennings serious when he says that ``the Internet is obsolete''? The proposition is simply alien; I hardly know how to reply.

Jennings says that in the past, he ``used Internet mail to reach people who were always on the road, in the air, in meetings. Most of these people have cellular phones now.'' Just today, I've received E-mail from Australia, Norway, the Czech Republic, Montana, Indiana, and Great Britain. There's no way I would have had telephone conversations with all those folks in 8 hours, but I do want to transact the business we share. Jennings writes gracefully and knowledgeably, but his opinion is so different from mine that I am left with no understanding of his larger message. Is someone pulling my leg?

Cameron Laird
Friendswood, TX
claird@Neosoft.com

Richard Jennings may have a point (January Commentary). Most of the legal and ethical squabbles of the present-day Internet stem from not knowing who is paying for the transmission of a message or what path that message may take. That's why there are problems with advertising, privacy, and pornography. A national, commercial communications infrastructure would change all that. Newsgroups in cyberspace already are being replaced by Web pages at specific sites. Perhaps what we require is a faster path to those sites rather than more of the present clumsy structure.

Michael A. Covington
Artificial Intelligence Center,
The University of Georgia
Athens, GA

Richard Jennings must have a great deal of money. Through the Internet, you get free access or at least a flat monthly rate for unlimited access to dynamic services. I no longer have to wait 20 minutes for toll-free technical support; I either access the World Wide Web, or I post a message on a n appropriate newsgroup. Help desks aren't willing to spend time trying to get their products to work with ``unsupported'' hardware, but chances are that one or two news readers have done this before and can help. BBSes cost money; I have ``free'' consultants on the Internet.

Carl Jabido
CJabido@eworld.com

Kudos to Richard Jennings! When I'm asked, ``How can I get plugged in to the Internet?'', I respond, ``What do you want to do once you're plugged in?'' The responses vary from, ``I'll surf, I'll send E-mail, I'll transfer files'' to ``It seems like it's time I became modern.'' I used the Internet extensively 10 years ago. However, currently I use it for E-mail only. Like Jennings, I rely on CD-ROMs to retrieve information. When asked if I've checked out the latest World Wide Web site, I usually respond, ``What's on it and is there a CD-ROM yet?'' So who does need the Internet? Perhaps it's not the Internet that's obsolete, but how we use it.

Bob Sch licher
Manager, Advanced Information Systems

Despite Jennings' claim of being a net vet, he seems to have missed the point that the Internet is really a community and that many people contributed all that useful information he benefited from. He describes no contributions of his own. But even if we recognize that Jennings considers the Internet merely a place to have played ``gimmie'' for 16 years, he still implicitly assumes that if he no longer needs the Internet, nobody does.

Lyle D. Gunderson
Pleasant Grove, UT
lyle.gunderson@m.cc.utah.edu