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World of Ends
epeus writes "At World of Ends, Doc Searls and David Weinberger explain the End-to-End nature of the internet in terms so clear even your manager could understand them. 'The Internet isn't complicated. The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement. The Internet is stupid. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.' and so forth."
8. "No one owns it.
Everyone can use it.
Anyone can improve it."
4. "Adding value to the Internet lowers its value."
So the Internet is destined to fail?
"Adding value to the Internet lowers its value."
internet + 5 = internet - 5?
the public needs to be made aware of these important facts about the Internet, and how being end-to-end and "dumb" is where its value lies.
Does anyone really consider the internet to be just slow TV? I thought that idea went out 3 years ago. Even my grandparents are googling for information when they have a medical problem or want more info about something they saw on TV. They do not think of the Internet as slow TV.
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
Despite this article's annoying use of absolutes (I know, I know, they're effective, but I hate it when people write an article as if its the last thing that will ever be written on that subject), they're mostly right. Think about it. We can do more on the Net now than 5 years ago, despite the best efforts of the RIAA, MPAA, US Govt, and pretty much every corporate interest out there. I have a feeling this will continue into the future, too.
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
Someone talking about the internet and actually making sense doing it....we can't have that!
Someone who realizes that it is what it is and can't be bent to everyone and their brothers whims...
My thought has always been that the Internet is Chaos and it works best that way....
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Well, I tend to disagree. It tends to make people stupid though, and it's hellishly smart at that as well. Just look at this place :-)
We had a great working title for the project though:
The Internet: Triumph of the Commons.
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
It's Humpty Dumpty logic:
--
Paul
Humpty Dumpty was wrong
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
A lot of people thought that the whole purpose of the industrial revolution was to use inventions like the cotton-gin to expand their plantations for unlimited controll and profits. While most people saw the invention as a great tool to end slavery, for others it was impossible to think of wealth in any other terms other than the size of a plantation, a farm, or estates. These people pushed slavery controlls to the point of civil war and were responsible for the deaths of millions.
I think today we have the same problem with "intellectual properties". It is impossible for people to think of wealth in any other terms than the number and amount of industires and people they can extract royalties from. It is impossible for them to understand that properties are not just about government edicts, or personal incentive, but natural forces - like everyone not being able to use the same thing at the same time. Well, with information - they can. And that is the real value of the internet.
Dumb companies will get smart or die. Stupid laws will be killed or replaced.
I'd really like to believe this, but then I look at corporate welfare(often the saving of dumb companies) and I look at the laws being passed by people completing out of touch(Napster's not a glamorized FTP program! It's criminal, not sharing!(Or maybe sharing is criminal!))
It's kind of depressing.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
I always thought the "information highway" analogy was most accurate. The net is simply a way to get your data from here to there. This makes it clear that the only way to make money from the net is in construction/materials (think Cisco) but like road construction I can pay anyone that knows how to do that. Or put up a toll booth, bu notice how many real roads don't have em because people take other routes. It's like infrastructure - everyone uses it, but it's not a business in itself. Get a clue, provide something of value and people will give you money for it. And remember, what used to be of value may not be today.
easy, tiger...
He's not dissing Zen, he's using it as an adjective; specifically, he's saying "Zen style" as in, "Not zen, but a cheap knock-off."
Its like the word "Trustafarian"- the people who classify aren't trying to be Rastas.
Now, to swing this whole thing back towards the topic at hand:
Infact, your complaint of the parent post, is the parent post's complaint of the article! Sweeping generalizations are indeed not technical, the imply some underlying dogma. Hence, the term Zen-style (or Zen-steeze, if you get down like that). The tip off is the "evne a manager could understand it!"- technical went out the window.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
The very rich are almost always going to be better off than anyone else, that's unavoidable.
If your structure resists preference, the rich will insist that it's good for everyone so it will be good for them.
Or they'll just hire someone to build a completely separate structure. That'll deprive my structure of the resources they might've contributed to improving it.
There is already a tendency for this today- large companies are transitioning their voice and videoconference systems on IP networks. But they often don't put it on the public internet, or even the same IP network their workers use for desktop applications- they actually fund separate networks just for their chat traffic.
That kind of massive oversupply of bandwidth assures them that they'll have low latency connections when they need them- but they're not using them all the time. All those mighty routers sit quietly at night, helping neither their employees, nor the general public.
If IP supported some kind of QoS tag, then these users might be able to meet the needs of real-time videoconferencing simply by spending $1000 to upgrade the routers on their LAN, rather than $10,000 to build a whole different network. And they'd reap many flexibility benefits.
It's a "big tent" philosophy. The rich will want to spend money to go faster. The Internet can either find a way to take their money, or drive them away to build a competitor, which the poor won't be able to access at all.
The fact is: not all packets need to be quick. For some applications, 3 seconds of delay is absolutely fine. For others, 3 milliseconds is unbearable.
If the internet acknowledges this fact, it becomes a little more complicated, but much more powerful. And it wouldn't be a flag day change- the upgrade can be piecemeal.
(Today, some people already abuse the bandwidth-conserving principles of TCP and HTTP to accelerate their own transmissions, at the expensive of everybody else. QoS tags would provide a legitimate way to do this, without interfering with other packets so much)