

Imagine A World with Multiple Internets - sdevani
https://medium.com/@shehzand/imagine-a-world-with-multiple-internets-70990abd4f69

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bediger4000
This was roughly the situation circa 1990. There was a TCP/IP based NSFNet,
VMS-based HEPNet/Spacenet and whatever DEC ran internally, a UUCP-based
Usenet, Telenet, FIDO and probably some others I'm not remembering, not to
mention various proprietary "walled gardens" like Compu$erve, Delphi, GEnie...

It was actually kind of interesting, for someone who wasn't stuck in a "my
subculture is BEST!" viewpoint. Innovations arose in a small population, and
spread based on merit. Really niche populations (OS-9 on a Color Computer III,
anyone?) could live in peace, and not be swamped by advertising and a mass
market that demanded _everyone_ be part of that mass market. You could laugh
at the hicks stuck in DELPHI, or worse yet, GEnie.

The reasons the author of this article gives for favoring a single market
(because that's what he really means) is "it's good for business, especially
Big Business". Should I, as a consumer, just nod my head and say "Yes, Yes!"?
A lot of generally accepted "good things" don't work from my point of view.
Internationalization? I'm a native English speaker, exclusive ASCII works fine
for me, why do I have to pay the performance penalty so that MSFT can sell bi-
directional capability half a world away?

