RE: Telecom competition (was Re: ECO: Saying nay to doomsayers)

From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Thu Aug 01 2002 - 17:29:14 MDT


>
> To rephrase my recent comments in another, perhaps simpler,
> way, the government (or telecoms) need to demonstrate to me
> (before I support legislation, increased fees, etc.) how
> drinking from the information firehose will qualitatively
> make my life much better.
>
> The internet era has clearly put any of us who are interested
> in "intelligently" processing information into information
> overload. For those who are not processing the information
> from an "intelligent" perspective overload is still a problem
> (how many sports channels do satellites now carry???).
>
> I fail to see how the high bandwidth final mile will significantly
> advance society, culture, or humanity as they currently exist.
> Only when the end recepticles have a much higher bandwidth
> than those currently in place (i.e. we have posthumanist
> entities) does it seem to me that higher bandwidths will
> be useful.
>
> Robert
>

Telepresence. Virtual remote interaction. Telepresence. A global virtual
supercomputer. Telepresence. New forms of entertainment that we haven't even
imagined yet. Telepresence. Massive decentralisation of content as everyone
becomes a server (p2p utopia).

Did I mention telepresence?

Interestingly, I'm beginning to wonder whether fibre to the curb is going to
be all that useful in itself. How useful is massive bandwidth going to be in
the future, if it's tied to the wall? I think that high bandwidth wireless
communication is the big thing; maybe a ubiquitous high bandwidth fibre
network will enable a cloud of wireless gateways, in turn giving us the kind
of wireless data network which can really make things interesting?

Emlyn

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