Re: [Membership]It's the Bandwidth, s..(was: A Model for Community)

[Joop Teernstra <terastra@terabytz.co.nz>]

At 01:10 PM 3/13/99 +0000, "Jeff Williams" wrote:
>Esther and all,
>
>  Pure nonsense Esther.  And furthermore you know it is nonsense or
>should know.  Almost Browsers have very advanced Graphics
>capability.
>
>Esther Dyson wrote:
>
>> .... basically, anything more complicated than e-mail or a graphics-free
>> Website is going to leave a lot of people out.
>>

Dear all,

For those who have moved beyond NY city or the highways of Texas, I'm
probably saying nothing new.
When have you last picked up a phone and heard:"Sorry, all circuits are
busy. Please dial again later."
Jeff, would you please consider this: If you happen to connect from outside
the capital in a less-developed country, do you realize that even email
trickles in at a speed of 1K per minute or sometimes even less?
Do you know that it takes between 15 and 20 minutes to see even a single
email message through a web page like hotmail?
Most people connect through internet cafe's that do a roaring business, but
are dumbing down by the month. (Most new owners know nothing about the
internet, a far cry from the early days, when hobbyists ran the cafe's.)
Almost nobody has a local POP box, most newbies know only of web based
mail--graphics turned off.

Esther is entirely right. Keep it simple, or you exclude "a lot of people".

>From the end of a very narrow pipe..



 
-Joop-
www.democracy.org.nz