Subject: [[email-masked]: Re: Australian MUDs]

From: Pavel Curtis <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 May 1992 11:31:03 -0700

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Date:	Tue, 12 May 1992 14:03:02 -0700
From:	[email-masked]
Subject: Re: Australian MUDs 

All of this debate over resources is exactly the point of my
original message: unless we come up with a more viable economic
model, the promise of our new media technologies will
not be realized.  

One approach is to ask the government to construct an information
infrastructure.  I believe that the highway system was justified as
necessary for defense.  Minitel is an example.

Another approach would be to devise a viable commercial model.
Is Compuserve profitable?  If we leave this to private development,
how do we prevent available services from violating personal freedoms
as Prodigy does?

It seems to me that the analogy with television evokes the correct issues--
issues of control over content and the impact of economics on content.
(Those weren't the issues the person who raised this at DIAC
was trying to raise... I think his analogy is valid for different
reasons than the speaker intended!)

- -- Amy
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