The past week has shown an enormous amount of activity here regarding the
virtues of Bitnet. After reading Murph Sewell's posting, I see that it isn't
a big deal to keep Bitnet here at Temple. In any event, there will be a time
when sender initiated transfers of binary and text files are available via
Internet. Other Internet failings also will probably be rectified in the
near future. Why do I say this? There continues to be a rapid increase in
the number of Internet services. Services such as Gopher, irc, and good old
ftp and telnet make Bitnet seem rather insignificant. In fact, I spent the
past hour using Gopher on a medium sized Unix system which I accessed on a
Mac SE from my house. The amount of info available through Gopher is
staggering considering how new Gopher is. This is the first time I used
Gopher and I was able to find information easily. This information includes
such stuff as recipes, news, travel advisories, Webster's dictionary, US 1990
cencus data, song lyrics, and entire novels. This information was easy to
find and access. It is also possible to save this info on a local host, be
it a PC, Mac, mini, or mainfame without using a single command. As such, it
is no longer necessary to use ftp commands to get most public information and
software. This nullifies the argument Eric made about ftp's clunky user
interface. New Internet services sprout up all the time. Can the same be
said of Bitnet? Given the frequency of new Internet services popping up, it
is reasonable to assume that many problems with the Internet will soon be
fixed. When The Internet's biggest problems are fixed, what will happen to
Bitnet? Will it go the route of accoustic modems or will CREN breath life
and vitality back into Bitnet?
On Monday morning, I will finish my report on Bitnet's value to Temple. In
it, I will suggest that we keep Bitnet since its cost to us is minimal. It
now seems best not to force users here off Bitnet. There are now many small
computers which greatly exceed the computing power of big IBM maingrames and
cost considerably less to buy and maintain. If Temple continues to maintain
an IBM mainframe, people here will eventually stop using Bitnet as they learn
more about fresh new Internet services. If Temple eventually follows the
example of many other Universities and businesses, we will drop our VM system
at which time, it certainly won't be worthwhile supporting Bitnet any
longer. Being bright people, I am sure most users at Temple will favor the
most modern and easy-to-use services to the utter exclusion of Bitnet
services. When that happens, Bitnet will become supurfluous here. Perhaps I
am totally wrong in everything I've just said, but I doubt it. Maybe CREN
will make substantial improvements to Bitnet and add services that are
superior to those on The Internet. If so, Bitnet may remain a major part of
network computing for a long time to come. In any event, I intend to be
prepared for whatever the future holds. Anyone who fails to adapt and who
resists change will themselves become obsolete.
Take care,
Stan Horwitz Internet: STAN @ VM.TEMPLE.EDU Bitnet: STAN @ TEMPLEVM
Temple University's Sr. Mainframe Consultant; Manager of the Help-Net
and Suggest lists; Listserv Postmaster
Standard disclaimers apply. One of these days I will make this sig file
look much nicer.
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