Article: 5101 of fa.future-culture
Path: ifi.uio.no!internet-mailinglist
From: "free agent .rez" <REZABEH1648@COBRA.UNI.EDU>
Newsgroups: fa.future-culture
Subject: NEXUS proto-FAQ
Date: 12 Nov 1993 06:39:04 +0100
Organization: Internet mailing list
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Original-Date:         Thu, 11 Nov 1993 23:40:04 -0500
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To: Multiple recipients of list FUTUREC <FUTUREC@UAFSYSB.UARK.EDU>

>christJ

>If this "cyberpunk" (term used loosely) movement is indeed a descendant of
>the "hippie" (another term used loosely) movement, then this idea would be
>like the small communes and stuff that seemed to pop up quite a bit.

yeah... in a sense.  i squirm when i hear the word hippie or commune, though i
can't put a finger on why.  i think it has something to do with the idea of
"dropping out" of the larger cultural context rather than trying to wiggle out
a niche and integrate it.  guess i tend towards the latter, maybe because the
former just plain didn't fucking work.

>A techno commune.  =)  Actually, I remember ...  Well, I don't really
>remember, but I have some faint recognition of an idea presented by
>some people on the net about a floating island-country which would be
>a haven for technology freaks from around the globe... with a live sattelite
>link to the net, and cool stuff like that.  Anyone else remember that?
>Wasn't it like autopia or am I mixing that up with something else?
>The name Jaguar X also comes to mind...

yep.  what goes around comes around, i reckon.  i dunno.  file this in the
It's So Fucking Tremendous It Just Might Work DEPT.

here's the info sheet, prefaced by a bit of adamfast rambling all candid-like.

--

From:   IN%"adamfast@u.washington.EDU"  "adam fast" 25-OCT-1993 22:31:59.77
To:     IN%"REZABEH1648@cobra.uni.edu"  "f|x"
Subj:   RE: nexus-faq?

rez-mon,

On Mon, 25 Oct 1993, f|x wrote:

> could you send me a copy of your nexus-faq again?  soon as possible?  i'm
> pondering an article for fringeware review.
>

sure, message follows. things here are going great guns. the spi coop is
ha\ving its first fleshmeet tomorrow (tuesday 26th oct 1992), we have our
afterburners on and are streaking down the runway, so-to-speak.

i have over 20 rsvps for the meeting, and so far more than enough firm
comittments to buy in. soon there will be nexi all over seattle.

we have a small amount of capital and are based on the pay-as-you-go
priniciple, payoff time for our investments, 18months... based on the
doubling time of transistor densities... the wyrld will be totally
changed in 18mo....

do you have the faq from TLG in san fran? we are copying their modus
oporandi for the time being. i'll send you that too. tho tomj and tim
from TLG are ridulously busy all the time, it might be useful to get some
info from them too...? i can fill you in on their addresses or whatever
if that is the level of info you need. they have an affiliate in santa
cruz, RAINet in portalnd, and we are philosophically linked to them, tho
possiblyu more activist in outlook. so RainyGarden still survives...

we have no firm faq yet, but the deal: $100 or $200 to buy in (we
haven't decided), $70-$75 per month for 14.4kbps iNet over voice phone
lines. dedicated, 24 hour a day access. no aup-- you can resell or do
whatever with your iNet that you want. 56kbps or T1 or T3 pipes available
on request, pricing negotiable. (we will have ouur own T1 in 6 months, i
hope, and will beging delivering iNet on fibre optics in the downtown
metro area at that time.) timeline: bits flow mid-dec94

we are firmly committed to privacy and freedom of speech-- we accept
payment in cash, and ask no questions about the identities of our
members. we are looking into authentication using PGP and other public
key systems, tho our first dialin node will not use those technologies.

i am also organizing a statewide, extremely low,low,low cost uucp-based
email network a la peter van heusen and hac-tic.nl in washingtonb state.
which will migrate to full dedicated iNet as necessary. timeline: mid94.

emphasis of this network is on society, culture, kids, activism, *NOT*
traditional computer folk. going to train folk with kidz from local h.s.
as the "teachers"...

please feel free to forward to whoever, use freely, sorry i have been
such a flake... still on fc, tho... you know...

(personal note, such-as-it-is... no longer unemployed, have an information
design job working on an NSF-funded project working with differently-abled
[disabled] kidz using iNet to communicate with the world and their support
network of peers and mentors... building a MOO with them, a gopherspace,
some WWW distributed hypertext stuph, research, experimentation, doing a
lot of personal-organizing, getting these kids to take on the architecture
of cyberspace themselves, the construction of their own c-space... they
already use autolog, listserv email lists tomake up clades, teams,
micro-environments populated by their own kind and kindred souls and not
limited by distance or disability or appearance...  building
self-confidence...it is kind of cool... thanks for your paper, helped
cystalize my own views on c-space, communicating, helping people
communicate...)


stream of consiousness, i am sorry. my brain is fried, i testified at a
city coucil meeting today on the national information hiway stuph and
cable franchises (which are up here for TCI and viacome)... ugh

seeyou

luv/lux
adam

--

The Seattle Peoples's Internet Cooperative
------------------------------------------
(or, how a bunch of people can share a connection to the Internet)

info sheet v1.0

Why a cooperative?

  Cheap, easy, and fast Internet service is something a lot of people look
forward to. Why isn't it available now? One answer is that big companies
haven't found a way to make a lot of money at it.
  That doesn't mean it can't be done tho. If you want a product or service
that isn't available where you are, one way to get it is to form a
cooperative to provide it! A cooperative is a group of people each
contributing a little bit of their time, money, and organizational skills
to the group for their mutual benefit.
  Cooperatives have a long and successful history in the United States;
there are electric, telephone, and water cooperatives in many communities
around the country. Why not an Internet cooperative?


Other Internet Cooperatives

  In fact, most of the Internet is already owned and operated by
cooperatives; NorthWestNet, BARRnet, CERFnet, and other 'regional
networks' are cooperatives that serve organizations (colleges,
corporations) instead of individuals. The NSFnet, the 'backbone' of the
Internet, is a cooperative that serves the regional cooperatives.
  The organizations that these 'cooperatives' serve are huge, tho-- like
the UW, Boeing, Stanford, ITT-- so they don't mind paying thirty or fifty
thousand dollars a year for a link to the Internet. For Boeing, which has
over thirty thousand employees, that works out to under a dollar per
employee per year! Why can't it be that way for regular people too?

  It can. These 'cooperatives' were started to serve large organizations--
but there is no reason we can't start a cooperative to provide service to
individuals and small businesses. (This is just bandwidth-sharing, pure
and simple; sorry for belaboring the point.)
  There are already cooperative, person-oriented Internet providers in
some places-- The Little Garden in San Francisco, California, RAINet in
Portland, Oregon, Hookup-net in Ontario, Canada and others.  These
networks provide affordable service to many people, and some have been
doing so for several years!  It *can* be done.


What's involved?

  A public-access data-network doesn't require much in the way of
traditional construction-- no stringing wires along poles or digging
cable. All the wires are already there. We can rent leased lines from the
telephone company, fiber optic cables from other telecom companies, or
just use normal residential voice phone lines that never hang up.
  A public-access data-network doesn't require much equipment either--
just some boxes called 'routers' that cost about the same as mid-range
PCs, and maybe some modems.
  A public-access data-network *does* require organization, and
maintenance, and planning-- it is mainly PEOPLE, not hardware!


How much will it cost?

  Leasing data lines and paying commercial Internet providers costs money,
but by sharing it we can reduce the cost to where we can each afford it
individually.
  It's a lot easier nowadays to get a connection without many restrictions
on it-- one that we can distribute to other people freely. SprintLink
sells service like this, and it is possible to get resellable service from
other vendors or organizations. This fairly recent development makes it a
great deal easier to share a connection.
  A high speed (T1) Internet feed from a commercial provider can cost
almost $3,000 per month-- but if 60 people share it, the cost per person
is only $50; if 120 people share it, it is $25 per month. And that is for
near-Ethernet bandwidth to the Internet! Until recently the University of
Washington, all 50,000 students and staff, used just one (1) T1 Internet
feed...! Of course there are the costs in-city to connect us together, but
each group can pay the cost of a lower-cost leased line to connect to the
Coop's Internet feed, and pay some of the costs associated with obtaining
the feed.

Some (very) rough estimates

  Using regular voice telephone lines it is possible to get Internet to
your house or business at speeds of 14.4kbps or higher depending on the
modems-- all the one needs is a small group of people (5-20) to share the
costs for a SLIP/PPP server that can distribute the Internet to that
group. The phone lines could be dialup or dedicated (24 hours per day).
  Costs for this option: ballpark estimate here, with 20 people sharing a
64kbps line, one-time-only setup would be around $200 per person with
monthly charges of $50-$100-- not including modems for both ends or both
phone line charges. That is for a dedicated, 24-hour a day connection.

  Having friends, acquaintances, or other businesses in the same building
who also need Internet helps a lot--it is easy and cheap to share
connections, and fairly easy to hook up computers via Ethernet over
(spare) regular phone wires in apartments and office buildings.  Doing
that kind of installation yourself can help cut costs, and sharing the
cost of the equipment needed to provide the connection helps a lot.
  The costs for this option are roughly the same as the first one, except
that each person doesn't have to have a phone line (since people are
connecting via Ethernet in their own buildings), but instead share one
higher bandwidth leased line . Note that for this method, tho, the amount
of instantaeous available bandwidth per person is much higher-- which
means faster access, even tho it costs the same as the telephone line
method.

  These estimates are for a coop with only 20-50 members. If we can get
more than 50 members-- say 50 to 100, Internet gets rapidly cheaper. With
a hundred or more members, the monthly charges for Internet per person
(most of the cost of the service) drop significantly. (100 members:
roughly $30/mo; 200 members, $15 per month, even tho you are buying more
bandwidth from the Internet provider). At this point, most of the money we
will be paying will be for point-to- point telecommunications costs inside
the city.

Other Costs

  Those are some rough money costs. The other costs are time costs-- we
will likely have to spend a fair amount of time discussing the whats and
hows over email and phone, and in person.  Once we have figured out how to
do it, keeping it running smoothly won't be too time consuming. Even for a
network of hundreds of machines, the amount of time spent administering it
is not very much when it is compared to the total time available to the
members of the cooperative network. We can either divide the work up
between volunteers, or have some member-workers and pay them to do the day
to day tasks (just like in a food coop).


Why not wait for a for-profit company to do this?

  There are companies that do some of this now. They just charge a lot.
The costs may come down in the future... so if you don't need Internet
now, waiting is a possibility.  On the other hand if you are tired of
waiting and want some say in what you are getting, when you get it, and
how much it costs, a cooperative is for you. The savings over a commerical
provider will more than pay you back.
  And coops are flexible. We can afford to try things that for-profit
compaies would never try-- like using new technology, or new ideas in
distribution (like ethernetting apartment and office buildings of our
members).


What a network cooperative is NOT

  It's not free service-- it's people helping each other, pooling
resources to provide network connections for mutual benefit.  This does
require some time, effort, and yes, money.  (Hopefully not much tho!)
  It's not a for-profit business-- the idea isn't to make money, it's to
provide an essential service for an approriate cost.
  It's not a 'content provider'-- or a censor. We have to keep in mind
that all we want to do is move data, and what people do with the data is
their own business (tho when you exchange data with other networks, the
data you are exchanging has to conform to their policies).
  It's not an effort to put other Internet providers out of business--
they provide specialized services to their own communities, just as a coop
does to its own community. For example, food coops certainly do not put
wholesale distributors or supermarkets out of business.


How do we do it?

  We need to find out how many people (and businesses) are interested, and
what peoples's needs, skills, and interests are. When we find out what we
all want, and what we can afford (in terms of both money and time) we can
decide the best way to get connected!


Sign up to the Seattle Peoples's Internet Cooperative email list!

  If you're interested, let's discuss how to do this on an email list;
send me (the list maintainer) a note to the address below with your email
address and that you want to subscribe to the SPI-COOP list.

  Please feel free to email any questions or comments to the
address below--


cheers,
adam

adam feuer
adamfast@u.washington.edu