Spending too much time on electronic mail, lately? Maybe Binet is the culprit—and maybe you’d like an alternative.
Among scientists in academia who’ve been bitten by the E-mail bug, Bitnet appears to have emerged as the transmitting/receiving network of choice. Since it’s a network run by a consortium of academic institutions, it’s private----essentially only other academics may use it. And virtually all academic institutions—and the National Science Foundation—are on it.
And best of all, for the end-user, it’s free. Its costs are covered by the participating institutions. No wonder its use has spread like a computer virus through the academic community.
Not that it’s destructive in the sense that a virus is, but it does have its drawbacks. Some scientists, for example, find themselves spending—rather than saving—a lot of time on E-mail due to Bitnet, a frustration attributable in large part to Bitnet’s poor interface with desktop PCs.
Not all ...
