Subject: the corporate Internet From: Stephen Smoliar <smoliar(at)ISS.NUS.SG> Date: Tue, 6 Dec 1994 19:22:45 +0800> Does anybody know whether our lifeline has >truly become corporate? Pierre, I guess I had better send this reply to the whole group, just in case. I guess you have not heard that 1995 is the year that the National Science Foundation will withdraw its funding of the Internet. I am not sure I know the exactly date (I really should); but I am pretty sure that the fiscal plug will be pulled before the end of the first quarter of the calendar year. Life is probably going to change pretty radically for most of us after that. (We know who runs the show in Singapore, but I am not sure whom THEY will be paying next year.) I have never heard of any outfit that calls itself the "Internet Corporation." As I understand the situation, there has already been a fair amount of corporate horse-trading over property rights to different sectors of the net. You may have been called by one of the players, perhaps to explicitly address whether buying your sector would be a good investment. Alternatively, the "Internet Corporation" may be an independent market research firm who realizes that it can probably make good money for an accurate census of the Internet community. Those are two perfectly legitimate explanations for the call you received. In either case I suspect you probably should have taken the ten minutes to be surveyed. There is a very good chance that the results will affect how much your University will be paying for its Internet access, and how much THEY pay will probably trickle down to you one way or the other. Hoping this was of some help, Steve Smoliar