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."

Comments

I'd say First Post, but it probably isn't so...

[soulctcher]

So what I will say is that this has got to be one of the most confusing, yet clear topics I've read on /. in a long time.

Re:I'd say First Post, but it probably isn't so...

[cosmosis]

Well first post or not, the whole end-to-end paradigm of the stupid network, is so simple and brilliant with economic abundance and endless innovation for everyone, except the telcos, that the only reasons we are not seeing the benefits is because of corporate welfare and monopoly power being given back to the Telcos. I say get them out of the way by letting them die fast in the free-market. We have everything to gain it. Now if only Michael Powell, FCC head, would get the simple message thru his head.

Planet P Blog

Theorem

[telstar]

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?

Re:Theorem

[Minna Kirai]

So the Internet is destined to fail?

Yes, Doc & Dave have set themselves up to be misinterpreted with those particular headings.

It makes sense if you read the text, and see that "improve it" in item 8 doesn't mean modifing the internet in any way- only modifying protocols that use it.

"Adding value" to the internet, on the other hand, would mean changing the internet itself, which would break old applications, and make it harder to add new apps.

Re:Theorem

[gmuslera]

Think in i.e. Riverworld of P.J.Farmer, you have a river that connects all places in the world, the river is owned by nobody, everyone can use it, and everybody can build whatever they think around and over it, but if you change the river itself (contaminating water, redirecting or trying to stop it, adding to it some drink concentrate to make the water taste better, whatever), all the world loses, they can't use the same river in all the possible ways that they could before (and, if I remember well the book series, you will face a war very soon :)

Re:Theorem

[Minna Kirai]

Filtering contents adds value, right?

ISP level filtering is one of those things which some people think adds value to the internet, but really damages it. Host-level filtering, however, is a voluntary, application-level process which the host can disable at any time. This is why improvements to the internet should come at the application level (where they can be easily changed and removed if they turn out to have downsides), rather than deeper in the network (where it's harder to convince the sysadmins that you need changes made to do your work).

(Host-level filtering may still be damaging in some cases, such as in a library whose users are forbidden from modifing local software. But that is a separate issue)

Music downloads adds value, right?

From the Internet's point of view, music downloads are "just another file transfer application". They are beyond the scope of section 4. They "improve" the internet by providing another use at the ends. But, as you may have noticed, DRM-based music downloads aren't very popular yet. That's because, as the authors suggested, non-open protocols lack explosive popularity.

an even more fragile piece of DRM-crap

I think that the majority of music-downloaders still manage to find non-DRM files. Not as much as when Napster was running, but it still seems that most music downloads wind up as MP3 files on multiple, redundant CDRs.

Hypothetically, the RIAA might someday propose modifying the internet to make their music transfers more secure, and that would be bad.

(If they could push DRM onto 80% of newly manufactured PC hardware, that would be very bad for other reasons)

In that case

[Raul654]

I hope he goes for a real-world case study -- the end to end transfer of a given porn movie. Definetely something your manager can read and relate to, plus it gives you an easy springboard onto such topics as average throughput, burst transmissions, etc :)

Are they technological-age hippies?

[Meat Blaster]

Because (at least by the writeup) it sounds like they're delivering some sort of Zen-style analysis from within a cloud of blue smoke. How well does the sound of a hand stream over the Internet?

Re:Are they technological-age hippies?

[mekkab]

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.

World Ends

[Slycee]

Oh God I missed the "of" at first.

Heaven help us. I found out about Armageddon on slashdot.

---

Re:World Ends

[Sgs-Cruz]

On an offtopic, but very interesting tangent, that is an extremely interesting, scary thought. If a nuclear bomb went off in St. Petersburg and 50 megatons of H-bomb were headed for every major city in the US, what would Slashdot report (assuming the editors knew it was going to happen - remember, this is hypothetical). Weird.

Re:World Ends

[gosand]

Oh God I missed the "of" at first. Heaven help us. I found out about Armageddon on slashdot.

In that case, all the trolls would be trying to get "Last Post". But how would you know who finally got it?

Earth has been slashdotted.

Re:World Ends

[nurightshu]

Only subscribers would know about it -- by the time it hit the front page for the rest of us rabble, the nukes would already be here.

Re:World Ends

[PD]

They'd write this:

"Nuclaer bombs' on thier weigh"

And we'd all be complaining about spelling errors when the big one hits.

Huh

[maximillianarturo]

So should I sell my internet stock... or what?

Basically, this is right

[Sgs-Cruz]

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.

Wow! Someone making sense

[haplo21112]

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....

Hold on

[Raul654]

Oh God I missed the "of" at first.

Yep, you're definetely qualified to be the new slashdot editor

The internet isn't stupid...

[CoolVibe]

The Internet is stupid

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 :-)

The Internet is stupid.

[stratjakt]

No, you're stupid, you big stupid!

Signed,
The Internet

PS: I'm rubber you're glue

Seems a bit utopian?

[cindy]

"That's also why the Internet feels to so many of us like a natural resource."

...which explains why so many would like to strip mine it without regard for the future or for the rights or best interests of others.

Hmmm...

[natron 2.0]

I wonder if Al Gore realized this when he invented it...

The answer to Chicken Little economists

[urbazewski]

Great article --- I tried to make some of the same arguments (and didn't do as good of a job) several years ago in response to proposals being put forward academic economists to "improve" the allocation of bandwidth with complicated pricing schemes and "smart markets". The efficiency fetish common amongst economists blinded them to the real strengths of the protocol --- stupidity, flexibility and reliability. (Alas, the NSF didn't bite on the funding, and I moved on to other unrelated projects.)

We had a great working title for the project though:

The Internet: Triumph of the Commons.

Excellent Article

[MojoRilla]

This reminds me why the original MSN failed and Yahoo succeeded. Microsoft wanted to control the content providers (making them use its own proprietary tools), while yahoo used HTTP and HTML.

Sure, absolute control might mean they can offer more features, but absolute control also means everyone can't play. The file format of Microsoft Word was closed, and so it is hard to write programs which understand it. Microsoft gets richer, but users can't get their own data. Finally, when Microsoft sees there is no other big driver to get users to upgrade, they open up their file formats.

The internet succeeded because of its simplicity, and because of HTML and HTTP. Almost anyone can serve HTTP. And write some sort of HTML. The protocols are simple and well documented.

adding value in the sense of not adding value

[feepcreature]

The collision between Anyone can improve it and Adding value to the Internet lowers its value goes away once you realise that Doc&Dave are using "Adding Value" in the sense of "not adding value at all, but changing things so that some stuff works better but the rest is worse".

It's Humpty Dumpty logic:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less."

"The question is, " said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty. "which is to be master--that's all."

--
Paul
Humpty Dumpty was wrong

Happened in industrial revolution too

[argoff]

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.

Rise of the Stupid Network

[Anonymous Coward]

The "attempting to add value decreases the value" theme was very well explored in a paper called "Rise of the Stupid Network." It's at: http://www.rageboy.com/stupidnet.html

It explains very well why networks should only get data from one place to another while doing nothing else.

A coworker just bet me it would be less than an hour before this post was marked as a troll since I'm an unregistered user. I think it will be marked as a flame, because it's on-topic.

Re:so, in other words....

[Minna Kirai]

I do take issue with that particular writeup, although it is true in many senses.

Today, many so-called internet users have their access mediated by firewalls and NAT. This reduces the set of internet services available to them.

(I'd even say, as a slight exaggeration, that their ISPs had engaged in false advertising by calling it "Internet Access")

By the original definition of the internet, anyone with access (control of one host) could send packets to any address:port combination, and open any port to inbound connections.

This means that everyone with internet access should be able to run an HTTP, FTP, or UT server. But many people are prevented by their ISP's routing policies.

Firewalls and NATs supposedly "add value" to the internet by making it safer for some users. But it's not made a lot safer (worms get through even today), and it has "lowered value", because creating new applications is more difficult. For example, today there is a movement towards SOAP; XML-RPC. Unfortunately, one of the motivations to promote it is to allow arbitrary, application-specific traffic to travel over port 80. To work around firewalls which only permit HTTP, we're starting to see a legitimization of tunneling commands over HTTP.

(I'm not saying that was the original goal of SOAP- but sneaking around firewalls is one reason that some developers are eager to try it)

So there's an example of why "adding value to the Internet" is generally bad.

However, there are cases where it may be good. We all know that IPv6 will be a postive (someday). Multicast extensions to the internet were developed well after it was first created, and are generally accepted as a good thing, although their deployment so far is well short of universal. Multicasting is a superset of existing internet functionality (assigning a single packet to be destined to multiple recipients).

Multicasting may turn out to have downsides, depending on how it's implemented (and I haven't followed development closely enough to be sure what the direction is). If it creates an unfair environment, where large corporations (CBS, MTV, RIAA) can create multicast streams, but individual users cannot, then it will cement inequality and make internet use move closer to resembling traditional television viewing. I feel justified in hoping this won't happen, however.

And QoS (quality of service) is a debatable issue, not a flat-out bad one like the article suggests. IP, the existing internet protocol (not to be confused with Intellectual Property), makes no guarantee that packets will arrive quickly or in order. It doesn't state that packets will travel at the same speed as each other. It doesn't even state that a packet which is sent will ever arrive, only that the network make a "best effort" at getting it through someday.

Since IP makes no guarantees of transmission speed, adding an optional mechanism to request QoS efforts won't break the existing protocol definitions. Yes, it may disturb some people to consider that internet packets, which used to be fair and unbiased, may someday have preference given to them based on the sender's bank account- but look at the alternative:

• Today, internet access is filtered by bank account- if your wealth is too low, you can't use the internet at all. Allowing some packets to be more expensive to send allows the rich to subsidize the poor, who might be able to afford some access instead of none.
  
• Today, deploying applications like voice, moving video, and arcade games over the internet is difficult, because your packets have latency and jitter. That's because they are competing will all kinds of email, IM, HTTP, FTP, and NTTP protocols as they move accross the network. To make low-latency interaction work better, we can either invest a lot to make the entire internet super-fast, or invest a little to recognize which packets need high speed, and bump them ahead of the lines.
  
• Someday, your ISP will decide to charge you by the gigabyte. Won't you want to be able to request a reduced rate, by intstructing your software to request low-priority packets, instead of rapid-response ones? (This is analogous to last-minute airline tickets)
  

Basically, there are only a few internet applications which really need low-latency response: speech, video, gaming, and maybe some forms of web browsing. Everything else, especially emails and big downloads over HTTP or FTP, would work absolutely fine with 10 or 100 times the per-packet latency.

As long as there is a reasonable bound on how much faster a quick, expensive packet is than a slow, cheap one- say, not more that 100 times slower- QoS won't block any people out from using the internet, and it'll make it cheaper and easier for high-speed users to get going.