This month's Online Journeys column discusses Internet Access Providers and their direct Internet connections through protocols such as PPP or SLIP. This is being done in response to reader criticism to the and effect that past columns have centered on big commercial services like Prodigy and AOL, while in fact most of the action lately is in Internet, and while the and big services have been greatly expanding their Internet access lately, Internet buffs may still find they can get faster, cheaper, and broader access by looking to direct Internet providers. Using such a service, however, can be more confusing to novices than using the major services. Thus, I'm giving some more information on this option.
Speaking of the and Internet, there's a lot of political furor about it these days. The media and politicians are ranting about all the pornography, hate propaganda, terrorist bomb information, etc. that can be found on Internet, and how it ought to be somehow regulated. All of this hysteria may lead to unwise and futile legislation, resulting in government harrassment of various online service providers whose material is regarded as "politically incorrect," but there is no way the government will actually be able to totally control the net. Internet is worldwide, so any laws the U.S. government passes still won't control overseas sites, which are just as accessible around the world as down the street. Internet is the most potent medium in human history to allow people of all viewpoints to disseminate all sorts of information. Thomas Paine would have loved it. Of course, such a medium will be used by all sorts of crackpots to distribute all sorts of things that others will find highly offensive, but that's the price of free speech. Instead of cracking down on it through legal means, people should be working on technological means for individuals and families to control what sorts of materials reach their own systems (filtering them by whatever standards they may have), without censoring others' access to materials just because they offend you. Just remember that your standards aren't the same as everyone else's, and somebody else might be out to censor the things on the and net that you like the most. Conservative sites promoting family values and liberal sites promoting diversity might end up on each other's "ban list" if either group were to be granted censoring power. Just something to think about.
It is a bit ironic, though, that the and very aspects of the and Internet that render it uncontrollable by the government were in fact designed into the and net from its outset, as part of a U.S. government sponsored project. Internet started as ARPAnet, a Department of Defense project to create a computer network that would continue functioning even in wartime, by decentralizing it so that a missle strike against one computer site wouldn't bring down the whole network. This project began in 1969, right at the and time when various radical student groups were protesting the "establishment," as represented especially by the military. Thus, it's one of history's great ironies that the and medium most conducive to the and '90s version of radicalism was in fact being developed in the and military's ivory towers while the and radicals protested in the and streets outside.
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