Michael S. Hart (c)1994 SAVE THE INTERNET! These are words I had hoped not to speak for another 20 months, if my predictions for the Internet had stayed on schedule. . .a bit too much to ask for predictions based on a 1971 schedule of growth curves for computers and networks. . .yet messages, such as this one, and all other text based messages, are going to be replaced by video and audio messages, whenever there may be the chance for one packet to replace another as follows in the next paragraph, which seems rather like making cars on the highways, in the usual analogies, drive in the slow lanes, which the semi trucks get to use the express lanes, or the current trains with "express" privileges being reversed onto sidings while freights come lumbering through much more slowly. IP AGENDA The Internet Protocol next-generation group has worked out this detail for the next iteration of IP, called IPv6: and a 28-bit flow label will flag packets carrying **delay-sensitive data** such as audio and video. (Data Communications 9/94 p.16) [**'s and : are mine, this is a paraphrase from Edupage, which is presented in its orgininal form below] Whatever analogy you use, whether it be the Peanuts and Pogo's of the comic strips, or highways, railroads or what-have-you: the point is the same. . .internet television and radio should pre-empt the written word. . . In a world in which even a nation such as the United States is only claiming an Adult Literacy Rate around 50%: are we going to replace the only remaining bastion of the written word once again with television and radio? Think about this, please: I can describe the following Peanuts episode to you: Linus sitting on the floor reading a book, Lucy comes through, bowling him over while pushing a television on wheels; Linus says "There is a moral here somewhere, if I can only find it." [or something to that effect. . .] That message took 193 characters. . .not even one packet. . .I didn't even abbreviate television to TV. . . . If I were to scan that comic strip in and send it to you as a .gif or .jpg file it would take many times as many packets if it were in black and white, and even more if in color. If I had Charles Shultz make it a part of one of his TV shows and sent you this few seconds of it this scene would take, it would take many times as many packets as that even if it were without the soundtrack. Add the soundtrack, and. . .well, I am sure you get my point, if you are willing to get it at all. Here we are. . .in a networked society in which pressure puts us in a position in which we are forced to write ever shorter pieces of email, more and more akin to "sound bytes" and this creates an ever reduced "signal to noise ratio," as each note has a header longer than the note itself in the case of notes such as the above Peanuts parable. People scream at us to write shorter and shorter notes, which must have shorter and shorter signature blocks. . .and then a huge freight train full of televisions and radio comes along, and knocks us all off the side of the tracks for a while. . . "There is a moral here somewhere. . .I just can't find it." I have been part of the production and distribution of nearly 175 files that have been distributed throughout the Internet, and all but one of them were basically what you might call an assortment of text files. The one single video file, taking one minute 51 seconds, will take up more space in its compressed format than Shakespeare, the Complete Works, or the Bible. In fact, in one format for the movie, perhaps the most popular, it takes as much as BOTH the Bible AND the Complete Shakespeare. . .COMBINED. . . ! "There is a moral here somewhere. . .I just can't find it." In Internet terminology, a picture must be worth more than a thousand words to be an efficient means of communication. A high resolution color picture, even compressed, takes much more space than the average electronic book. I am sure most of you are familiar with .gif files that are a megabyte, and this is the same size as the average 300 page novel takes in uncompressed .txt format. Ok. . .you can .jpg this picture, and the book can be .zipped. [please no technobabble. . .] The end result is, that even with only a very low resolution woodcut type illustration method, the Tenniel illustrations, for Alice in Wonderland, take up much more space than Alice. Here are the listings for our last two editions of Alice: 64489 Mar 6 1994 alice30.zip 163189 Mar 6 1994 alice30.txt 64809 Mar 17 1992 alice29.zip 162153 Mar 17 1992 alice29.txt And for the black and white illustrations, which we reduced to the lowest resolution that didn't ruin the 42 pictures. 748407 Aug 15 17:32 algif10.zip Most pictures are not going to be this small, much less the motion pictures and audio given high priorities above. I strongly suggest that the literacy and education rates in question are NOT going to be as improved by more movies, or more radio, be they Internet Radio and movies or the normal varieties we are currently surrounded by. If you have ever looked at the script for movies or a radio show, then you know they are VERY short when written, movie scripts for even two hour movies having no more dialog than a comic book. I would like to suggest that the text of audio and video be given higher priority than the audios and videos themselves because they have a much higher cost/benefit ratio, and the bandwidth is NOT unlimited, or there would be no need for a priority code of this nature. Just last weekend we deleted as many users as possible from our listservers, due to requests because the email load was getting too high. . . Deleting email about Etexts to make room for radio and TV?? "There is a moral here somewhere. . .I just can't find it." Perhaps I will find the moral is that I should have kept my mouth shut. . .but please forward this to those who will be interested. . .with your comments. . .even if that is to an Internet committee member. [please cc: me, if you do] Here is the Edupage notice in its entirety: IP AGENDA The Internet Protocol next-generation group has worked out the details for the next iteration of IP, called IPv6: addressing space will expand from 4 to 16 bytes, to ease the Internet's impending address crunch; user authentication will assure receivers that a given IP packet comes from the source it claims; an autoconfiguration feature will simplify the translation between the 48-bit MAC addresses used by Ethernet and token ring networks and 32-bit IP addresses; and a 28-bit flow label will flag packets carrying delay-sensitive data such as audio and video. (Data Communications 9/94 p.16) Also of interest: MOSAIC AND MARKETING GO HAND-IN-HAND In the past two years, Mosaic has become "the single most important factor in commercialization of the Internet," according to Internet architect Vinton Cerf. With the help of Mosaic and the World Wide Web, Internet commerce "could easily hit more than $100 million" by the end of 1995, says the editor of the Internet Business Report. Mosaic now claims about one million users, and more than 10 companies are licensed to develop commercial versions of the glitzy software. (Wall Street Journal 9/23/94 B2) [Of course, that is about 3% of all Internet users, even if true. We should keep in mind that about 1% of computers are Internets'. I heard that about 1% of Internet sessions were via Mosaic, but a 5% figure was cited as the amount of Internet resources used. . . consistent with the estimate that including illustrations is five times more bandwidth intensive. mh] About Edupage: EDUPAGE is what you've just finished reading. 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