5 ms·

I believe his was actually: the network is the computer. And he was right, he just didn’t anticipate greedy US ISPs would set progress back 2 decades.

by tw04 2y ago

ghaff 2y ago
Oh, please. Pray tell, inform us about how ISPs held back progress for 2 decades. Good broadband access could perhaps have come earlier and cheaper but it basically came soon enough once web-based services were available. I'm not going to argue that US ISPs are universally great but saying that they held back progress by "2 decades" is pretty much ignorant. Especially given that Sun was presumably mostly talking about the context of business computing at the time.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  1994: a UWashington CS PhD student quits their PhD and goes to help @home (IP-over-cable) get started, on the basis that they would provide symmetric up/down bandwidth at full capacity. How long was it until this became a reality?
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  You could go back a couple of decades earlier (1960s--1980s) and point at AT&T who specifically prohibited third-party devices on their network (answering machines and even neck-rests or phone-book covers were among the prohibited items),[1] and had flatly rejected packet-switched routing as an obvious threat to their monopoly.[2] Unix itself (and Linux, Android, and MacOS) wouldn't have existed save for a 1954 consent decree which prohibited AT&T from entering the software business.[3] When the company found itself with an accidental operating system the only thing they could do was give it away for free. "From Ken with love".[4] ________________________________ Notes: 1. Partially supported here: <https://www.promarket.org/2023/02/20/when-considering-breaking-up-big-tech-we-should-look-back-to-att/ https://www.promarket.org/2023/02/20/when-considering-breaki...>. Phone book covers was AT&T v. Winback & Conserve Program, Inc. Hush-a-Phone was an earlier case in 1956 involving a cup-like device, physical only, with no electrical or electronic components: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A-Phone_Corp._v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A-Phone_Corp._v._United_S...>. 2. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_Wars#Early_computer_networking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_Wars#Early_computer_n...> 3. <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/should-we-thank-for-feds-for-the-success-of-unix/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/should-we-thank-...> <https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20190086 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20190086> and <https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/pol.20190086 https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/pol.20190086> (PDF) 4. <https://sanctum.geek.nz/presentations/a-brief-history-of-unix.pdf https://sanctum.geek.nz/presentations/a-brief-history-of-uni...>
  - ghaff 2y ago
    I could go back into the history of the telecommunications monopoly in the US but that hardly seems relevant to the modern Internet.
    - dredmorbius 2y ago
      More than fair point. That said, there's a long history of entrenched incumbents exerting anticompetitive pressures against new entrants. AT&T itself was founded in part out of spite against the telegraph monopolies, who opposed it. I've pointed to Bernard Stern's 1937 article "Resistances to the Adoption of Technological Innovations" several times on HN: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20532443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20532443>. The markdown may now be found at <https://rentry.co/szi3g https://rentry.co/szi3g>. The ISP situation is somewhat different, though if you look at early dial-up providers (Prodigy, AOL, CompuServ, and MCI Mail), those were generally and quite unambiguously aimed at creating captive markets. They differed from the more open general ISPs such as Earthlink, Mindspring, The World, SonicNet, etc., who largely offered protocols-based access (straight TCP/IP, SMTP/email, FTP/HTTP file/content access, IRC, and the like. Those have largely been subsumed by telco oligopoly providers, e.g., the new AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon in the US. I don't know to what extent there was or wasn't overt resistance to expanded Internet services, though the US's general lagging on widespread and high-speed broadband provision relative to global peers remains an issue. It was a significant talking point during the COVID-19 lockdowns when much in-person interaction switched to videoconferencing, a functionality still poorly supported by much of the population's Internet service.
- tw04 2y ago
  >Oh, please. Pray tell, inform us about how ISPs held back progress for 2 decades. In most of the country, until Google Fiber started rolling out, we were stuck with cable companies offering a max of 5Mbps upload, and starting to push caps. In wide swaths of the US, that is still the case. Meanwhile in many of the Nordic countries, Germany and parts of southeast Asia, people had 100Mb fiber to their homes in the early 2000s. But yes, I'm ignorant and have no idea what I'm talking about...

I believe his was actually: the network is the computer. And he was right, he just didn’t anticipate greedy US ISPs would set progress back 2 decades.

by tw04 2y ago

I believe his was actually: the network is the computer. And he was right, he just didn’t anticipate greedy US ISPs would set progress back 2 decades.

ghaff 2y ago

Oh, please. Pray tell, inform us about how ISPs held back progress for 2 decades. Good broadband access could perhaps have come earlier and cheaper but it basically came soon enough once web-based services were available. I'm not going to argue that US ISPs are universally great but saying that they held back progress by "2 decades" is pretty much ignorant. Especially given that Sun was presumably mostly talking about the context of business computing at the time.

PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
1994: a UWashington CS PhD student quits their PhD and goes to help @home (IP-over-cable) get started, on the basis that they would provide symmetric up/down bandwidth at full capacity. How long was it until this became a reality?
dredmorbius 2y ago
You could go back a couple of decades earlier (1960s--1980s) and point at AT&T who specifically prohibited third-party devices on their network (answering machines and even neck-rests or phone-book covers were among the prohibited items),[1] and had flatly rejected packet-switched routing as an obvious threat to their monopoly.[2] Unix itself (and Linux, Android, and MacOS) wouldn't have existed save for a 1954 consent decree which prohibited AT&T from entering the software business.[3] When the company found itself with an accidental operating system the only thing they could do was give it away for free. "From Ken with love".[4] ________________________________ Notes: 1. Partially supported here: <https://www.promarket.org/2023/02/20/when-considering-breaking-up-big-tech-we-should-look-back-to-att/ https://www.promarket.org/2023/02/20/when-considering-breaki...>. Phone book covers was AT&T v. Winback & Conserve Program, Inc. Hush-a-Phone was an earlier case in 1956 involving a cup-like device, physical only, with no electrical or electronic components: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A-Phone_Corp._v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A-Phone_Corp._v._United_S...>. 2. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_Wars#Early_computer_networking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_Wars#Early_computer_n...> 3. <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/should-we-thank-for-feds-for-the-success-of-unix/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/should-we-thank-...> <https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20190086 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20190086> and <https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/pol.20190086 https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/pol.20190086> (PDF) 4. <https://sanctum.geek.nz/presentations/a-brief-history-of-unix.pdf https://sanctum.geek.nz/presentations/a-brief-history-of-uni...>
- ghaff 2y ago
  I could go back into the history of the telecommunications monopoly in the US but that hardly seems relevant to the modern Internet.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    More than fair point. That said, there's a long history of entrenched incumbents exerting anticompetitive pressures against new entrants. AT&T itself was founded in part out of spite against the telegraph monopolies, who opposed it. I've pointed to Bernard Stern's 1937 article "Resistances to the Adoption of Technological Innovations" several times on HN: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20532443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20532443>. The markdown may now be found at <https://rentry.co/szi3g https://rentry.co/szi3g>. The ISP situation is somewhat different, though if you look at early dial-up providers (Prodigy, AOL, CompuServ, and MCI Mail), those were generally and quite unambiguously aimed at creating captive markets. They differed from the more open general ISPs such as Earthlink, Mindspring, The World, SonicNet, etc., who largely offered protocols-based access (straight TCP/IP, SMTP/email, FTP/HTTP file/content access, IRC, and the like. Those have largely been subsumed by telco oligopoly providers, e.g., the new AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon in the US. I don't know to what extent there was or wasn't overt resistance to expanded Internet services, though the US's general lagging on widespread and high-speed broadband provision relative to global peers remains an issue. It was a significant talking point during the COVID-19 lockdowns when much in-person interaction switched to videoconferencing, a functionality still poorly supported by much of the population's Internet service.
tw04 2y ago
>Oh, please. Pray tell, inform us about how ISPs held back progress for 2 decades. In most of the country, until Google Fiber started rolling out, we were stuck with cable companies offering a max of 5Mbps upload, and starting to push caps. In wide swaths of the US, that is still the case. Meanwhile in many of the Nordic countries, Germany and parts of southeast Asia, people had 100Mb fiber to their homes in the early 2000s. But yes, I'm ignorant and have no idea what I'm talking about...