Subject: The dismal science meets computer science - The obvious thought experiment

From: [email-masked] (Dan Kolis)
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 20:48:22 -0400

On [email-masked]

Hmmm. Very interesting material here on economics and traffic
analysis. I remember when I heard as a young teen Kruschev and
Kennedy agreed and primarily designed Intelsat, that anything upon
which those guys agreed with certainty must be wrong. (doesn't really
matter who decided this. The point is a framework for a thought
experiment about Internet economics).

Now, the argument I recall WAY BACK then; (ex post facto to me, but
this also doesn't matter), is that the earth was DEFICIENT in that
the moon wasn't a good enough natural reflector for unlimited telcom
traffic by using it as a reflector. This is the thought experiment I
(either) recalled or dreamt up during a discussion. -So-
to remedy this deficientcy, institutions of a non profit and non
discriminitory nature (Intelsat) came to be as an alleged no profit,
dogooder driven institution. Of course it got, fat, overpriced,
arrogant and bad at technology.

"The Communications Satellite Act of 1962 was passed and the new
organization came into 
being in March of 1963 with a charter to establish in conjunction
with other countries 
a global communications satellite system to serve the needs of all
countries, especially 
the underdeveloped, and to hopefully, through its creation,
contribute to world peace 
and understanding. 

http://www.clarkeinstitute.com/lecture4.html

Of course, the underdeveloped world never got anything whatsoever,
but an endless expensive committee blundering along for 11 years and
subsidizing a lot of probably entertaining travel:

http://www.peak.sfu.ca/cmass/issue1/access.html

Anyway, nothing new there. I leave it to you to decide on the "peace
and understanding" part. Also "serve the needs of all countries", is
a bit of a hint, too. How about the people in them?

But, *if* the moon allowed reliable low attenuation telecom; (or if
the atmosphere simply permitted it by some other physical law
unmediated by humans). Its nearly impossible to understand if
Internet would be sustainable. Without a rare resource; (transponder,
fiber, etc) to allocate via a cost, its possible the initial anarchy
would yield to some licensing system; but whatever system it would be
would still leave it brutally overutilized and barely functional. And
investment to make alternatives would be impoverished, as they would
always face the prospect of competing with a free system. The only
reserved parking spot carefully considered is the *last* spot.

Now in the book "Technologies of freedom"; the mightly intellect of
Illithel de sola Pool is even stuck on resolving much of this.

Now; you PROBABLY EXPECT SOME ALLEGED MASTER PLAN <insert here> from
a smarty pants guy like me, but, ah no. Instead the possibilty Global
Crossing, Worldcom, etc fiber operators will operate the businesses
without replacing / sustaining the investment, and the emergence of
Low Earth orbiting satelittes carrying TCP/IP for next to nothing;
(or nothing as part of some value added package). Is going to happen.
The reference condition for any theory of telecom should be that
transport itself doesn't cost anything, and its all still
sustainable. 

This has hints in it: http://www.isen.com/

AKA the "rise of the stupid network". 

(1) But the reference condition is a network so stupid its: infinite
in bandwidth, instant, 100% available, secure, and free. 

"We first encountered this formulation in the September 2001 issue of
Roxane 
Googin's High Tech Observer. She wrote, "The perfect network is
perfectly plain,
and perfectly extensible. That means it is also the perfect capital
repellant, 
[which] implies a guaranteed loss to network operators, but a boon to
the 
services on the 'ends'."

http://netparadox.com/

I promised no master plan, but it seems like its at least possible to
have an endless stack of value added services absorb the
infrastructure costs. Maybe there should be a structural floor for
all the infrastrucutre services, and it simply be replacement at life
end for the hardware? I don't know. When Atomic energy was proffered,
it was going to be "electricity too cheap to meter", so this reductio
ad absurdum tends to show up; and when done on a large scale (aka
California power), hurt people.

Sometimes, I wish I hadn't napped quite so much in economic's class,
sometimes. )But the room was always so darn warm) !

Regards,
Dan