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Shirky: Customer-owned Networks and ZapMail

I have read this before. It is worth reading again. What happens when the necessary hard- and software for building networks and accessing services are cheap and understandable to all and everyone? Customer-owned networks.

"To understand what's going to happen to the telephone companies this year thanks to WiFi (otherwise known as 802.11b) and Voice over IP (VoIP) you only need to know one story: ZapMail. The story goes like this. In 1984, flush from the success of their overnight delivery business, Federal Express announced a new service called ZapMail, which guaranteed document delivery in 2 hours. They built this service not by replacing their planes with rockets, but with fax machines."

Shirky: Customer-owned Networks and ZapMail

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