In the mid-1970s some brilliant student at Carnegie Mellon University got tired of trudging down many flights of stairs from his computer terminal to get a soda from a basement vending machine. By some law of the universe, the machine was always out of his favorite variety whenever he was most thirsty. So he hacked up a network connection to the vending contraption. Now, before he made the long trip down, he would e-mail it to see which sodas were available.
The Coke machine on the Internet became legendary, and it wasn't long before students a thousand miles away were querying it, just on the principle that it was there. This spawned other Coke machines hidden here and there on the Net. The obvious next step: e-mail the vending machine and have the Coke delivered to your room.
While we all wait for that utopian day, other types of vending machines are popping up on the Net. These dispense information. The idea behind the Net-wide service of FTP is that if you want some information, all you have to do is go into the machine somewhere on the Net that stores it and copy it into your machine. What could be easier?
Turns out that for those who have trouble navigating the unsigned labyrinth of the Net, a vending machine is easier. You simply stay where you are and e-mail a message to an information vending machine. It dispenses what you want back in minutes. Right now Net vending machines are free, but some time in the near future some will accept a form of electronic money for commercial material.
You can get an idea of how all this works by sending a message, any message, to email@example.com. Your message goes to the vending machine at the IEEE (the electrical engineer's association) which holds its technical reports on emerging technologies. What you'll get in return the first time is a voicemail kind of menu that says "if you want this file, mail to address #2, if you want that file, mail to #3." Or, you can jump directly to a final choice and mail to firstname.lastname@example.org. In a few minutes (depending on traffic) the Internet vending machine should deposit a report-in-progress on the social implications of virtual reality in your mailbox.
Internet Vending Machines Keeping Up with the Phoneses