Re: <nettime> Adieu Minitel, Adieu!

[Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>]

On 06/30/2012 07:45 PM, Patrice Riemens wrote:

> On the technical side, the Minitel was the losing pawn in the end in the
> 'system battle' between the centralised Transpac/X.25 network and the
> distributed TCP/IP based Internet (whose basic feature, packet switching,
> is claimed by the French to be rather Louis Pouzin's than Vint Cerf's
> invention ;-) Transpac also goes this evening, together with the Minitel.

Let's thank our stars that X.25 was not imposed. OK, maybe global 
neoliberalism would not have spread in the same astonishing way under 
price-fixing communicational borders imposed by national telcos, but if 
X.25 had prevailed we would have had a corporate-controlled expansion, 
rather than the wild ride of "globalization from below."

I'm glad to have taken the second option.

best, Brian


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org