[GRLUG] Google and Kansas City

[Michael Mol]

My concern isn't that people in the boonies don't have access to
high-speed Internet, my concern is this:

1) For those on the Internet, the Internet makes a huge amount of
things cheaper.
2) For those on high-speed Internet connections, assumptions about the
quality and nature of the web differ from those of people who are not
on high-speed Internet connections.
3) The "makes things cheaper" nature of the Internet puts services
which are exclusive to Internet presence at an advantage over those
which maintain a IRL-only or a mixed presence, and eventually those
services with IRL presence fold. Look at Western Union. Look at what's
happening to book stores.

What happens when (not if) this happens to essential services? I
expect to see a large amount of disruption as systems and services
essential to current culture become very difficult to use without good
network access.

Yes, the people who live in the boonies choose to live in the boonies.
However, _someone_ has to, because dense population centers such as
cities can't exist without large areas of agriculture, and that
agricultural region isn't going to be without a human population. New
York can't live in a vacuum.

On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 1:54 AM, Bob Kline <bob.kline at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's basically it.  More performance,
> in the most general sense, will cost more,
> but it's up to the individual to decide what
> they want to spend their money on.  It's
> no different than how people decide what
> kind of car to drive, or how big a TV they
> have to have.
> For those in the boonies, some chose to
> live where it's not economic to run the
> faster wires.  But there's still HughesNet.
>    -- Bob
>
> On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 9:32 PM, Joseph McLaughlin <jwm8351 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Are you advocating Government involvement?
>> Should the market place relegate this fair city to the bottom of the heap?
>> And why do cows need high speed Internet?
>>
>> There is still a bug in the program must use RAID!
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: Michael Mol <mikemol at gmail.com>
>> To: "Mailing List for LUG in greater Grand Rapids, MI area."
>> <grlug at grlug.org>
>> Sent: Wed, March 30, 2011 9:10:56 PM
>> Subject: Re: [GRLUG] Google and Kansas City
>>
>> I have a real, genuine fear that we're going about this with a
>> *severe* case of myopia.
>>
>> I had difficulty navigating the web in 2007 on dial-up, with image
>> bugs, large banner ads, huge JavaScript loads, large CSS loads,
>> fifteen 5k or so avatar images whenever you visit a forum thread--even
>> auto-play video video advertisements...Imagine how bad it is now.
>> There are places within twenty miles of here which can't get cable,
>> DSL, or even a reliable cell signal.
>>
>> Those involved in designing web services purchase very high-end
>> network connections, get accustomed to those connections, and then
>> *design* for those connections. It's a really bad self-reinforcing
>> loop. Much like how software got slower as computers got faster, but
>> it's much harder to raise the median Internet connection speed than it
>> is to raise the median computer speed.
>>
>> There is a not-insignificant fraction of the population in America
>> itself which is still going to be completely out of reach of even
>> 10Mb/s Internet commercial services in ten years, and people gripe
>> that our municipality isn't acting like those which take out a 25-year
>> mortgage on their own essential services infrastructure to "give" us
>> access to gigabit broadband connections below cost.
>>
>> I can't be the only one who's noticing this. In order for a
>> bound-to-the-Internet economy to be sustainable, Internet services
>> need to be virtually ubiquitous, and essential activities need to be
>> manageable on lower-end Internet connections.
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 9:46 PM, Bob Kline <bob.kline at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/google-bestows-1gbps-fiber-network-on-kansas-city-kansas.ars
>> > This gives a good summary about
>> > why Google is doing this.  It thinks
>> > it needs higher speeds to support
>> > future projects.  And it clearly sees
>> > that the existing big providers are
>> > digging in, not providing higher speeds,
>> > and not above not letting others do
>> > it either.
>> > It will be interesting to see how this
>> > plays out.  Chattanooga, TN, already
>> > has a 1Gbps system.
>> >    -- Bob
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>>
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