From hungary-online-owner Fri May 12 19:54:21 1995 Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost) (fnord) by nando.yak.net (8.6.5/8.6.5) id TAA15726 for hungary-online-out31415; Fri, 12 May 1995 19:54:21 -0700 Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost) (fnord) by nando.yak.net (8.6.5/8.6.5) id TAA15716; Fri, 12 May 1995 19:54:11 -0700 Received: from tbeke@math.mit.edu () via =-=-=-=-=-= for hungary-online@hungary.yak.net (15714) Received: from math.mit.edu (MATH.MIT.EDU [18.87.0.8]) (fnord) by nando.yak.net (8.6.5/8.6.5) with ESMTP id TAA15710 for ; Fri, 12 May 1995 19:54:01 -0700 Received: from markov.mit.edu (MARKOV.MIT.EDU [18.87.0.40]) by math.mit.edu (8.6.12/8.6.9) with ESMTP id WAA03941 for ; Fri, 12 May 1995 22:53:55 -0400 Received: (from tbeke@localhost) by markov.mit.edu (8.6.12/8.6.9) id WAA15483 for Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net; Fri, 12 May 1995 22:53:55 -0400 From: Tibor Beke Message-Id: <199505130253.WAA15483@markov.mit.edu> Subject: (HOL) Narancs, US gov, 'net To: Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net Date: Fri, 12 May 1995 22:53:54 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: from "Rick Bruner" at May 12, 95 11:05:58 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 4748 Sender: owner-Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net WARNING: I've compressed several points into this one message, in response to Rick's, and the first one IS about Magyar Narancs! :-) The World Wide Web, or true on-line version, promised long time ago, has been up and running for weeks now. The site is the URL http://hix.mit.edu/narancs/ in the States, and http://www.eunet.hu/eunet/hix/narancs/ in Hungary. Arm yourself with a knowledge of Hungarian. Boy, do I want to see these promoted at the IFABO! ;-> Rick grumbled that one cannot reach the CIA by email. I think most US gov't agencies do a surprisingly good and fast job at responding to the Internet paradigm. You know about the White House, Senate, and Congress servers; but I had a lot of fun with Declassified Satellite Photographs, too (http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/dclass/dclass.html) put out for common spoil just weeks after Clinton's executive order declassifying them. It is true, however, that progress's been most visible on the passive server side (gopher, WWW... ) and most agencies still decline to respond to personal queries by email. Notable is the US Census Bureau and Internal Revenue Service. But their rationale is quite simple (and true, moreover): there's no authentication for email. In all cases, however, they'll respond by fax or snail mail, within 30 days ;-), or to phone calls. And how do you lawfully file, store, quote, refer to an email anyway? I think the moment Internet becomes rigid, authenticable, officious, regulated enough to become a channel of communication to the US Government, YUCK, baby, that day you start cursing Al Gore. ;-) In the case, of course, that the old bureaucratic paradigm ends of subverting the Internet. The alternative -- that the fuzzy and open Internet becomes reliable enough to subvert governmental channels -- is still up to developers, software engineers, mathematicians, these kindsa folks. Something else looms on the horizon, of course, which is that Bill Gates- meets-cable-meets-MTV-meets-superhypeway-meets-idiotic-cheering-media- meets-plain-shit wins. I'm certain they'll have a _market_, and I'm certain of it for a reason that might open up the floor for furious debate. The US has an immense and little-advertised Third World inside. It's the black, the hispano, the Indian, the immigrant, the urban white nigga, the upward-looking-poor population. The same population (and their children) keep McDonald's, Nintendo, MTV, pay-per-view boxing finals, soft porn cable, Howard Stern, home theatre, low-key consumer electronics a success. Nothing's gonna scrape them off Bill Gates-meets-cable-meets... kind of Los Angeles Internet, except one thing. If it's not entertaining enuff. If it's not fun enuff. (Too pricey is not a problem.) Lest I be misunderstood: what is the platform on which I dare say such things. As a researcher, addict or visitor of the fields of mathematical logic, artificial intelligence, artificial cognition, artificial perception, knowledge representation theory, learning systems or neuroscience, I see _none_, I see _no_ conceptual progress in these fields since the 1950's. Not for all the hype, SciAm typish articles, pretty Mandelbrot sets, Santa Fe Institute, parallel processing, neural nets with twenty-two nodes. This may sound haughty beyond belief, but I've collected and reconciled my impression with specialists from these fields. And the Gibson-like, Neuromancer-like, Media Lab-like, Lawnmower Man-like, Tron-like, Arthur C. Clark-like future ain't gonna be here without these. You'll have Los Angeles Internet, with lots of hype about multi-media and virtual reality. Think of the development of software: instead of the end user learning more and more algorithmic communicative skills (which humans are capable of), you observe algorithms trying to imititate more and more human-like behaviour (which algorithms, a priori, _could_ be capable of, but God, does anyone have a working idea how; and the algorithms in end-user products are coded by teams of ad hoc programmers anyway, with their ad hoc capabilities of writing code _for humans_. I see that as a bad direction. Of course, it's propelled by business, esp the immense drive to be _first_ on the market, and the wholly idiotic short-circuit feedback mechanism that celebrates what celebrities do because they are celebrities. I'm sorry to sound so bitter -- and to be so long. It's not that I don't see good signs. Steve Jobs, SiliconGraphics, NetScape, Rich Stallman, HotWired, all contributed new paradigms in their respective fields. The product of brains will never disappear. Bill contributed a new paradigm in his field, which is business. And may disappear. Unfortunately? :-) Tibor ############# # This message to Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net # was from Tibor Beke # # To unsubscribe, # send "unsubscribe" to # An announcement-only subscription (less volume) is available # at # Send mail to for more information, # or to if you need human assistance. #############