[gurps] Re: Internet on blue planet and like worlds

[David Scheidt]

On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 9:26 PM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:
>> From: "Onno Meyer" <Onno.Meyer at gmx.de>
>> The difference between that and the internet as we know it is simply a
>> matter of scale and search engines. But to provide a wealth of content, you
>> need people who write it to start with!
>> I believe the limiting factor will be content producers, not bandwidth. By
>> the time you have a Blue Planet Wikipedia, the hardware will be no problem
>> any more.
>
> Historically, bandwidth has always lagged behind *desired* content. Even
> today, high quality video phones aren't feasible without expensive dedicated
> links. Telepresence and other bulk surveillance will expand to fill any
> reasonable capacity shared bandwidth.

Eh.  It's last-mile bandwidth that's the problem.   There's huge
amounts of backbone that are still nowhere near capacity.  Last mile
is lagging, at least in the US, for largely non-technical reasons, but
rather ones of monopolies trying to extract rents from their product.
Cable companies made a huge mistake, and adopted a shitty design to
provide bandwidth to their customers, and are now fighting to stop
their customers from using it.  Additionally, they'd much rather
charge outrageous prices to provide content, then allow users to get
it from someone else.  Telcos are hampered by having a huge installed
base of copper wires, and wanting to protect the rents they can
extract from them (and of course, they'd also rather sell you
pay-per-view, than allow you to get to content elsewhere.)  None of
that matters in the longer term though.

-- 
David Scheidt
dmscheidt at gmail.com