Re: CS-234 Discussion

CS234 <cs234@lhmerino.dont-email.me> wrote:

How does Usenet fit into the vision presented by Licklider and Taylor in
"The Computer as a Communication Device"?
 
Reflect on:
- Which aspects of their vision are realized through Usenet?
- What aspects have evolved differently from what they imagined?
 

Their vision was realized through these aspects:
Features like follow up encourage interactive dialogue thus going beyond one-way transfer of information.

They were interested in cooperative modelling where people communicate and confront their internal models for a subject.

The organization of discussion in groups provides an outline for what the subject of the discussion ought to be.
Each article is listed and accessible through a tree architecture.
The delimitation to specific topics invite the users to compare their mental models.
By placing each article at the same hierarchical level,this highlights how each model is competing with one another rather than prescribing a specific relationship between the various articles
Users thus form online communities of common interests.

The presence of articles in full before the response of the subsequent user as well as the quote features is analogous to the use of the computer at the Stanford research Institute:
- Users can read in full the primary data of other users (their articles)
- They can read through articles without interrupting any user 

Usenet's design resembles more a store and forward rather than a channel switching.
Users can on request publish an article. Then they can at request retrieve an article. There is no need to be listening to the channel while another user is writing on it.
All of which is managed by the code used to run Usenet which constitutes an OLIVER.

Usenet is an open-ended network evidenced by the fact that this assignment will be completed by many student under different operating systems.

However their analysis is out of date or wrong on some fronts :
- The cost of hourly communication is drastically lower than their estimated 16$/hr (with inflation 144$/hr)
- ISPs for home internet do still provide "continuous" access to telephone lines and charge as such based on this promise
 whereas phone operators "promise" continuous access but in effect use store and forward infrastructure as per their preduction and offer quotas based on volume