Re: U.S. Postal Service proposal: restricting domain names to street addresses

[Michael Sondow <msondow@ic.sunysb.edu>]

	All these various schemes, including the current one by the Post
Office, may or may not be useful to one community or another, and may or
may not be economically viable, but what they all have in common is a
return to the location of communications in geographical space rather
than cyberspace, a retrograde and revisionist undertaking in the present
climate of Internet decentralization, expanding distribution of root
server databases, mobility of e-mail addresses and domain names. 
        We, who grew up with primarily geographical location-based
communications for individuals, will probably never free ourselves from
the idea that a message emanates from the place where the person who
wrote it is located. I am sitting at a computer in France at this
moment, but because my domain name has "edu" as the TLD, and furthermore
"sunysb" as the slTLD, people assume that I'm in New York! The Internet
frees us from this, but we are unable to accept it and exploit its
advantages fully because we are still living in the past. Our children
will wonder what could have possessed us to continually be dragging the
freedom of cyberspace back into the realm of land-based geography from
which the Internet has liberated us.



On Fri, 14 Aug 1998, Peter Deutsch wrote:

> errr....
> 
> [ You wrote: ]
> 
> > At 11:24 AM 8/14/98 -0400, Michael Sondow wrote:
> > >I fail to see the logic behind your arguments. If e-mail can go to a
> > >street address, it is no more than a telegram. Why, then, has all the
> > >trouble to set up networked digital communications be taken? 
> 
> This was probably a rhetorical question, but the answer of
> course was not "to deliver bi-directional email", but "to
> speed and ease communications". Sometimes that's going to
> be bi-directional communications, sometimes that's going to
> be uni-directional and in both cases that will be useful.
> It's always a big mistake to assume you know everything
> everyone will want to do with the tools you build...
> 
> 
> > Actually, the idea, around our boardroom, was to install an envelope
> > stuffer, which would convert an email to a letter, in order to send e-mail
> > to folks (friends/relatives/family) who did not have e-mail at all. We
> > figured it to be a logistical nightmare, for us. Someone else may actually
> > get it to work. It should be reasonably profitable. Cheaper than a telegram
> > but more expensive than a letter, even if more convenient. Also, it's
> > really out of MHSC business scope and mission. There are other problems
> > wrt, file-attachments.<grin> MHSC wants 1% if you can make it work<grin>.
> 
> Actually, this sounds similar to the "network fax" project
> organized by Carl Malamud (among others) a few years ago.
> Instead of email as telegrams, it was fax transmissions
> which were despatched as email so they could be rendered
> and then delivered as a local phone call (eliminating the
> long distance cost). They'd cobbled together a collection
> of rendering code, modem drivers, etc and you basically
> sent your fax to an email address with the phone number as
> part of the domain name.  The mail system took care of
> routing it to the right mailhost and you then had your
> local call delivery.
> 
> FYI, they even figured out how to pay for it all, in that
> they wanted to sell banner ads on the fax cover page. I
> thought the idea had potential, but would clearly need
> better software and real marketing. Haven't heard anything
> on this for a while so assume htey never went ahead with it
> as a real business.
> 
> 
> > >Surely the
> > >whole point to the Internet is that it serves two-way communication that
> > >is not restricted by geography: you can get your e-mail anywhere, change
> > >your e-mail address or your domain name from one ISP or server to
> > >another, alias mail, bounce it, forward it at will.
> .  .  .
> > Where in here is there a requirement for a physically located e-mail
> > address? The answer is that you don't need it. The whole idea has the
> > merits of a fart in a hurricane.
> 
> Before becoming too rude or aggressive, consider what this
> idea might do to the economies of scale for distributing
> third class (ie. "junk") mail. Your nationwide advertising
> agency could email the PDF file to the appropriate server,
> which would print and bundle the mail for delivery. Such
> people *do* want the physical location, and would be happy
> to save a few micro-pennies per copy delivered.
> 
> Would it really affect an economy of scale? Maybe, maybe
> not but you seem to be a little too scornful of the
> usefulness of geographic-based services. Some people *do*
> care....
> 
> 				- peterd
> 
> -- 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>      Peter Deutsch,                                   (514) 875-8611  (phone)
>   Bunyip Information Systems Inc.                     (514) 875-8134  (fax)
>     <peterd@bunyip.com>                               http://www.bunyip.com
> 
> "How come there's never time to do it right, but always time to do it over?"
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>