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November 1996
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/ The Future On-line
I found the vision of the on-line future that Mark Schlack described in "Smart, Fast, and Well Connected" (September Editorial) stimulating and bracing. However, I don't believe that vision will be fully realized until the companies concerned with building the global infrastructure forget the idea, at least for a quarter of a century, of making substantial money o
ut of it. The Internet arose out of a sense of collective experimentation that had little to do with the profit motive. Tim Berners-Lee is not as wealthy as Bill Gates by a long way!
Paul Richards
East Finchley, London
I agree it will take visionaries to make the intelligent network happen, but they won't have to ignore the profit motive. For some time, the telecom industry has been making the transition f
rom hardwired, inflexible switches to a software-defined network, and for their own reasons: efficiency, manageability, expandability, and the ability to sell value-added services. Once the network is programmable, nearly anything is possible. The biggest obstacle will be for carriers to act more from their customers' perspective. -- Mark Schlack, editor in chief
Matthew Wilson more...
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The Future On-line
