Centerfield

Since Centerfield is dedicated to nonpartisan, thoughtful discussion, I'm sure no one will chime in the obvious Al Gore comment.

(besides, as I'm sure y'all know by now, Al Gore never said he "invented the internet")

Nope, you just did it for us.

D'oh!

I know the country is in "Give Reagan credit for everything that is right with the world" mode since he just passed away, but let's keep a firm grip on reality here. The breakup of AT&T in the early 80's was only the end result of a consistent pattern in government intervention to keep AT&T from restricting the potential uses for their phone lines. It started in 1968 when the Carterfone ruling forced AT&T to allow foreign attachments to telephone wires and continued through the 1970s when Bell was increasingly forced to lease their lines to competitors, regardless of their purpose. While AT&T was certainly interested in maintaining the kind of control Jon speaks of, the momentum of government deregulation was moving in the opposite direction and it is extremely doubtful they would have succeeded in keeping the control they desired. While I applaud Reagan's support of the At&T breakup, saying that he personally "deserves some credit for making the Internet possible" is true only in the most abstract sense.

In addition, given the misrepresentation of Gore's comments on his role in promoting the internet, I would be careful how we toss credit for that around. Gore's support for creating an interagency network in the early 80's and his championing of the 1991 High Performance Computing and Communications Act, as well as his work as vice-President at separating the internet from the control of the government agencies which had created it may not qualify him as the internet's inventor, but he certainly played a far greater role than any other political figure. At the very least, it warrants his actual quote: "I took the initiative in creating the internet."

And, as long as I'm on the topic, it should be noted that MCI was not a "new upstart" that emerged after the AT&T breakup. The company was created in 1969 and allowed by the FCC to provide limited private line long distance. It didn't really take off until after the 1984 antitrust decision really opened up the competition, but it had been allowed to tap into AT&T's "private" switchboard since 1978. It had been taking advantage of a policy specifically designed to restrict AT&T's control over non-voice use of its telephone lines. The 1984 decision, and Reagan's support of it, certainly helped, but only in terms of allowing other companies to offer voice services. The policy was already in place to allow nonregulated use of telephone lines for transferring data, beginning with a decision in 1970 and expanded with a decision in 1980. The main thing MCI got out of the 1984 decision was profitablity as a voice carrier, not the ability to offer faster internet than AT&T.

Yes, I'd go with Jeremy on this one. My recollection is that the Reagan Administration did not take an active role in the AT&T breakup, and that it was mostly a judicial process.

The general trend toward deregulation, which started under Carter and gathered momentum under Reagan, was important in helping the economy. However, I would distinguish between economic and environmental regulation. There were a lot old economic regulations, say on trucking, that were a drag on the economy and needed to be dumped. On the other hand, I think Reagan did not pay enough respect to environmental regulation.

By the way, I do credit Gore for promoting the "Information Superhighway"

The bones of the Internet were solidly in place by 1973, when Reagan was Governor of California and Al Gore was studying theology. After that, growth was driven mostly by the spread and advancement of information technology and cost reductions in same. Politicians had little to do with it. Academic computer scientists and corporate infotech-lust played much bigger roles.

The TCP/IP protocol standard was implemented in 1983.

It's easy to argue historical events such as the ATT breakup or the HPCC Act of 1991 were formative, and they certainly affected the timelines and specifics to some degree, but I'd argue that ongoing quantam leaps in both computer and communications technology and the resultant order-of-magnitude cost reductions in same pretty much made the process itself inevitable.

Now, credit where credit is due: Al Gore was indeed the primary sponsor for HPCC '91, which indeed helped speed up the development of faster and more complex global networking. He accomplished this by working in cooperation with officials in the Reagan and Bush 1 admins. HPCC '91 was signed into law by Bush the First. Ironically, the major goal of bringing the federal government into the forefront as an advanced user still goes largely unfulfilled in the non-military government sectors, but the funding for high-speed high-volume testbeds bootstrapped the technology quite a bit, and moved the transition into mass use ahead by an unknown but substantial time.

But Gore didn't "create" the internet, it existed for years before he started pushing the buttons to help promote faster development. It was just a bad choice of words on his part, one that ended up overshadowing the very real work he did do in getting federal funding and coordination for high-speed infotech. I would contend it would have developed anyway without the government funding, as it was an obvious money-maker--I was using private commercial networking services from home well before HPCC '91 was even introduced, and there was no doubt that private industry was going to move heavily into the field of both the internet and high-speed data communications.

Jeremy argues well that:
> The breakup of AT&T in the early 80's was only the end result of a consistent pattern in
> government intervention to keep AT&T from restricting the potential uses for their phone lines.

True. But neither the pace of change nor the end result were by any means obvious back then. I distinctly remember big, huge arguments when Reagan told his Justice Department to get the antitrust suit done and break up the Bell system. The deal was done in 1982, good timing for something finished up by a new President. I still have a book from that argument, "Three Degrees Above Zero," by Jeremy Bernstein, on AT&T's side. There was a lot of sentiment for keeping Ma Bell, especially amongst Democrats and the media.

> The main thing MCI got out of the 1984 decision was profitablity as a
> voice carrier, not the ability to offer faster internet than AT&T.

The prices they were charged for access wouldn't have allowed them to offer reasonable Internet bandwidth charges, any more than they could have survived financially to make such an offer.

I think it could have strung out for another decade, and it could have ended up with different rules. Certainly, the idea that AT&T should have to yield bulk use of privately-owned equipment and lines at gov't-set price bases was not atall obvious, although there had been some precedents. If that hadn't happened, the other long-distance carriers would only now be getting big, even if they had succeeded in attracting the kind of investment needed to build lines without a customer base ("what's that? you want me to put in $10Bn on the offchance that you can attract a customer base in a couple of decades?"). There are several countries in which telephone deregulation has gone more along those lines.

Even after divestiture, although AT&T would offer pricings for high-bandwidth lines, those pricings were based on how many long-distance customers AT&T could theoretically have serviced with that line, not a linear bandwidth scaling. ISPs with high-bandwidth backbones would be impractical on that price basis.

On Gore credit, I'd agree with his statement minus the word "the". He did take initiative in Congress on Internet bills. But many peoples' initiatives were needed. I'm willing to pass it off as an honest mistake, though. I make worse mistakes half the time I open my mouth.

Probably too late to have anyone even read this.

Reagain was a great Commiunicator and played his greatest role as President. Period. He was no FDR, Washington, or Lincoln. Will no be watching or listening to any of the media hype and political kiss butts regarding.

You are fools and have bought fallacious theories if you think Deregulation has helped this country.
Reagan years where when the huge wealth gaps started! Limbaugh and his propagandizing for wealth sitting on his butt making $7 million a year. [with the chancre on it so didn't go in service!] This is the period hot air and funny money replaced genuine investments. Etc. etc.etc.

He left us the S&l Bailouts at $500B --left to taxpayers to pay off cronies and still paying off.

The Internet actually has neede some restriciton and Regulation--for some reasons I can think of.

etc.

Alex