Without the government, there would never have been an Internet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet
UUCP was thoroughly entangled with the early Internet, though. Ran on a lot of the same machines and pipelines. FidoNet was early PCs.
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I'm countering the popular idea that FedGov was necessary to have modern networks.
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Because here's a bunch of hobbyists creating a whole parallel infrastructure out of bandaids and foil.
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It's arguable from both sides if one examines where the smaller tech & education originally were funded. IBM engineers were also hobbyists.
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highly dependent on the telephone system, which was created in an environment of heavy federal regulation
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I'm not saying you're absolutely wrong. Only that the issue is not black-and-white and depends a lot on basically arbitrary definitions.
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Bell patented the telephone in 1876, era of federal regulation started in 1913. http://www.mackinac.org/6033
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FIDOnet was decades later than that and dependent upon the widespread availability of no-charge local calling.
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impossible to say whether the network over which FIDOnet ran could have grown up without regulation, but it *did* grow up under regulation.
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In an era where the state hamhands everything, it's difficult to find things free of its touch, for obvious reasons.
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But, importantly, FIDOnet was free of state direction or funding.
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. Banned in Sweden. SubGenius, Zhuangist, white-hat troll. Defrocked mathematician. Brain problems.