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The First Thing to Be Bought and Sold on the Internet Was Some Weed



So the Silk Road has been shuttered (for now), four "significant" drug dealers have been arrested in the rubble of the dark web's favorite illicit bazaar and, to the surprise of literally no one, heroin, cocaine, and weed are stronger, cheaper, and easier to get than ever before. 

It might now be worth taking pause to recall the birth of e-commerce. The very first online transaction involved—what else?—a sack of bud. 

John Markoff has the nugget in What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (2005). Here's Markoff, via the Guardian's Mike Power: 

In 1971 or 1972, Stanford students using Arpanet accounts at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory engaged in a commercial transaction with their counterparts at Massachussetts Institute of Technology. Before Amazon, before eBay, the seminal act of e-commerce was a drug deal. The students used the network to quietly arrange the sale of an undetermined amount of marijuana.

A lot has changed over the past four decades. But if there's been one constant in that span, it's humankind's compulsion to get high. American and British authorities are working side-by-side in what they say will be an ongoing uprooting of online drug markets, but if the Silk Road 2.0 isn't already open, it's certainly being paved, because E-commerce started with drugs. And for all we know it'll end with drugs, too.  

big ups

Apparently Margaret Thatcher was big on evidence-based schemes for drug policy. That same shit needs doing now...

You'd be hardpressed to find two schools further apart in the same nation. Exactly what were the details of this transaction, and can the participants be prosecuted?

nowaysj wrote:Can the participants be prosecuted?

Depends on statute of limitations for the relevant states.

I say we prosecute. Each party probably has a phd, scores of patents, at least eight figures of personal wealth. We could incarcerate these guys in special high end private jails, and bill them for the expenses. Nip our budget shortfalls in the bud, so to speak.

To turn the war on drugs into a sustainable profit center, we must expand the market into high end combatants.

nowaysj wrote:I say we prosecute. Each party probably has a phd, scores of patents, at least eight figures of personal wealth. We could incarcerate these guys in special high end private jails, and bill them for the expenses. Nip our budget shortfalls in the bud, so to speak.

To turn the war on drugs into a sustainable profit center, we must expand the market into high end combatants.

We could also start killing the homeless, would save thousands in city ordinance/sanitation costs. And provide a cheap source of meat for animal shelters, win win.

nah we should burn the homeless for fuel

m8son wrote:nah we should burn the homeless for fuel

Think of the environment, man...we've only got one planet.

wub wrote:

nowaysj wrote:I say we prosecute. Each party probably has a phd, scores of patents, at least eight figures of personal wealth. We could incarcerate these guys in special high end private jails, and bill them for the expenses. Nip our budget shortfalls in the bud, so to speak.

To turn the war on drugs into a sustainable profit center, we must expand the market into high end combatants.

We could also start killing the homeless, would save thousands in city ordinance/sanitation costs. And provide a cheap source of meat for animal shelters, win win.

Homeless here are already being rounded up and sent to camps. While not officially prisoners, their ability to leave is somewhat restricted.

nowaysj wrote:

wub wrote:

nowaysj wrote:I say we prosecute. Each party probably has a phd, scores of patents, at least eight figures of personal wealth. We could incarcerate these guys in special high end private jails, and bill them for the expenses. Nip our budget shortfalls in the bud, so to speak.

To turn the war on drugs into a sustainable profit center, we must expand the market into high end combatants.

We could also start killing the homeless, would save thousands in city ordinance/sanitation costs. And provide a cheap source of meat for animal shelters, win win.

Homeless here are already being rounded up and sent to camps. While not officially prisoners, their ability to leave is somewhat restricted.

Surprised they're being kept around TBH. Should have a policy similar to the animal shelters (conversely)...if a homeless person is picked up and not claimed/rehomed within a certain time, they are are destroyed.

Not destroyed, euthanized.
The last thing you want to do is alienate them by telling them you'll destroy them.

Electric_Head wrote:Not destroyed, euthanized.
The last thing you want to do is alienate them by telling them you'll destroy them.

They're homeless, what's to alienate?

wub wrote:

Electric_Head wrote:Not destroyed, euthanized.
The last thing you want to do is alienate them by telling them you'll destroy them.

They're homeless, what's to alienate?

You don't want a homeless uprising.

They are serving a use right now. They are a case study, through which protocols can be developed, tested and ultimately implemented. When their usefulness in this context has expired, I'm sure they will be used to some further, potentially final, advantage.

Maybe we can convert them into some form of renewable resource.

J Skrilla wrote:

Think I read some science debunking site that said the total amount of electricity this would actually produce was nominal and not worth the hassle/pods.

you could also make them work, do something useful for us

Companies should just paint them in there company colours and liveries and make them hold up advertisements all day for well below minimum wage. And once they've done with them, then they can destroy them