World of Ends Public Draft

Doc Searls sent me the link over to the newest work that he and fellow Cluetrain person David Weinberger haveput together. It's called "World of Ends" although I like the subtitle "What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else" better - but that's just me. In any case, some interesting reading, particular if you like/d The Cluetrain Manifesto. Update: 03/08 14:42 GMT by CN : Yeah, this is a dupe of yesterday's story. Everyone point at Hemos and laugh.

Comments

The net isn't rocket science

[hugesmile]

All we need to do is pay attention to what the Internet really is. It's not hard. The Net isn't rocket science.

Wasn't the internet invented as part of a military Advanced Research Project Agency, and include a mechanism for redundancy to keep communications going in case of a military attack (often delivered by rockets and missles).

Sounds a lot like rocket science to me...

Hehe

[arvindn]

4. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.

Sounds screwy, but it's true. If you optimize a network for one type of application, you de-optimize it for others. For example, if you let the network give priority to voice or video data on the grounds that they need to arrive faster, you are telling other applications that they will have to wait. And as soon as you do that, you have turned the Net from something simple for everybody into something complicated for just one purpose. It isn't the Internet anymore.

Now go back and read the paragraph again replacing "the internet" --> "slashdot", "video data" --> "subscibers", "applications" --> "readers". I hope that made you chuckle ;^)

Re:I like the idea, but...

[WolfWithoutAClause]

I think that this article ignores the fact that bandwidth is not an unlimited resource.

I'm not sure I agree; well technically you're right of course. But the amount of bandwidth on the internet available for each of us is growing exponentially. Beyond a certain point, there ought to be so much bandwidth sloshing around that nobody can easily use it all. Which isn't to say we won't try ;-)

This especially applies to the airwaves. While new technologies (e.g. wireless mesh, ultrawideband, etc.) promise to deliver massively more bandwidth/MHz than the old analog broadcast methods, that doesn't necessarily mean that we have the right to summarily revoke the incumbant telco/broadcasters' rights to use their alloted spectrum without interference.

Yes. Well, they've paid for it. You can't take it away without compensation. I don't think you could take it away legally or morally.

These companies deserve to at least be compensated for the massive amounts of money they spend secureing their specturm licences, and for the infrastructure improvements they're going to have to make to take advantage of the new technologies.

No. I definitely don't agree with this. I mean look at WiFi, nobody paid for the WiFi bandwidth. The users pay for the equipment; and that pays for the R&D. Everyone wins.

Unless you are saying that because of techniques like WiFi, other data carriers should be given a huge compensation from the government? If so- you're nuts.