baylor@daisy.cc.utexas.edu (Baylor) writes:
> So can individual communities/nations/rezs get on the net
>without being part of some big school/R&D lab? Who would pay?
I don't know that tribal offices would have use for a full
internet hookup in the state that the net is in now--in the
near future there will probably be more ftp and gopher sites
for Native information (following the lead of the site at
Cornell, thanks to Mike Wilson), but as it is now I imagine
that something like FidoNet would suffice for quick information
eschange and would cost much less. Most tribal offices that
I've seen have at least a couple of desktop machines that could
hang a modem off of it and transfer files. The drawbacks would
be that it's not terribly accessible to tribe members where
that's a problem and a big concern would be that FBIetc
snooping would be much easier than on the internet, simply
because of the low signal-to-noise ratio that we've been
enjoying lately l-:
Where the money would come from is another problem; maybe the
kinder-gentler BIA could implement something. It doesn't take
a very powerful computer to just sit with a modem and bounce
files around, does it? And if there were a serious network
across several reservations, one internet gateway could tie
folks into the internet for mail and mail-ftp much more cheaply
than shooting for dedicated internet sites all over. That way
there would be a lot more Indians (that's Culture, not Race!!!)
in on the discussions that go on here.
It seems like I remember hearing about an organization that
goes and convinces big firms to donate their old obsolete 1992
computers to non-profit and needy organizations. Does anybody
know about that?
Arlen
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"Even now, we scarcely feel our hearts beat before they break in protest"
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