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Spring Topic

First, I think we can all agree that the term info tech includes the 
internet as one component. 

Second, I respectfully disagree somewhat with the recent post by 
Johnathan Stanton in which he seems to say that the term "internet" is 
reasonably easy to define. In fact, I think the point at which one 
decides something is part of the internet and something is not is very 
hard to determine. Also, with the ongoing evolution in technology, it is 
very hard to pinpoint a technological definition. I agree, as a fellow CS 
grad student, that our "textbooks" (such as they are) would probably use 
the TCP/IP definition, but for debate that can be very murky. Is the 
computer used for access part of the internet? Is any dial up service 
properly excluded from the internet? One can have a stand-alone 
computer as a dialup machine that uses TCP/IP protocols. Anyway, these 
would be tough questions which might well be impossible to definitively 
answer.

Thus, I think a broad term such as "info tech" makes a lot of sense. 
Since it is hard to define a lot of specific tecnologies, and they are in 
many ways intertwined, let's have at and debate a topic on info tech.

I also think that my topic suggestion to Josh closely resembles that of
the Berkeley topic paper, though I did use "increase" instead of 
"strengthen." So, for practical purposes, I use that topic as an example
of my key point. Use of the term "regulation" is quite inclusive of the
issues of access. The question would be a regulation stipulating equal
access vs. the provision of such by the government (as in an aff plan and
a neg counteplan). However, just debating the issue of access is very narrow
indeed, and very risky when we only have a couple of weeks to figure out some
topics.

Good luck to the topic committee. I will happily stay home and attend my 
algorithms class. :)

Bill DeForeest
Gonzaga

P.S. A rather humorous aside - definitive proof that a flow cannot be as 
objective as we would like. A recent post "noted" that the mutual pref 
supporters lost not only in the balloting but also "on the flow." Funny, 
an awful lot of people saw it quite the other way - to many people, on the 
flow mutual pref won in a "crush." Go figure..... :)
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Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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