[BLU] Re: Connectivity woes in Boston

[jc at trillian.mit.edu (John Chambers)]

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David Kramer wrote:
| On Mon, 13 Aug 2001, Michael Bilow wrote:
|
| > The situation is a little more complicated than you paint it, I think.
| > ...
|
| Some excellent stuff there.  In fact, I'd like permission to forward it
| onto another list, attributed or not, if that's OK with you.

Well, I'd say give him credit, whether he wants it or not. ;-)

| ...  I bought into cablemodem
| technology for the constant connection.  If outbound bandwidth was their
| only concern, give us 100Kbs instead of 300Kbs.  But there has to be other
| issues.

Same here.  I'm don't object to high speeds,  but  it  was  never  an
important consideration.  The main reason for an Internet link is for
the constand connection. I routinely tell my browsers to not download
images,  because  they  mostly  just  clutter  the screen and make it
difficult to find the information that I'm after.

| As far as DSL goes, the way I see it is the phone company themselves are
| killing it, despite all reasons.  They will not offer attractive services
| themselves (no static IP's, very low bandwidth), and they fight tooth and
| nail agains doing their part for other DSL providors, by taking months to
| do the hookup, or claiming the customer lives too far from the CO.

A couple years ago I read an elegant  explanation  of  this  sort  of
problem. The writer pointed out that, despite all our social myths to
the contrary, America (like the rest of the world) has a professional
top-management class that is mostly hereditary. One of the aspects of
this class is that  they  are  mostly  "keyboard  averse".   Using  a
keyboard  entails a serious loss of status in this class, and most of
them  have  never  learned  to  use  keyboards.   Such  work  is  for
underlings. This is as true of the computer industry as it is for all
the others.

What this means is that the corporations are mostly run by people who
have  no clue whatsoever about how people are using computers and the
Internet.  They have heard of windows and browsers and such, and have
seen  them  in passing on their secretaries' screens.  But they never
have and never will learn to use them.  So their decisions are  based
on a total lack of understanding of the issues that they're deciding.

I recall thinking at first that this was surely an overly pessimistic
analysis  of the situation.  But more and more I see evidence that it
may have been very accurate.  The way that phone and cable  companies
have  dealt  with the Internet makes a lot more sense if you use this
as the explanation.  The misunderstanding of the Internet  as  a  new
kind  of  TV makes sense, for example, since a computer display looks
and acts a lot like a TV set.  For another example, a few years ago I
was  working  at a desk where my computer had two displays (one color
and one mono), plus an ascii terminal.  One visitor kept referring to
my  three computers, and I couldn't get across the concept that there
was only one computer present.  The fellow had no concept of  what  a
computer was, though he was a top manager of a computer firm.

To some extent, this is a variant of the advice  that  you  shouldn't
attribute  to  malice  that  which  may  be  adequately  explained by
stupidity or ignorance or some other similar word.

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