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What The Internet Isn't
looseBits writes "Doc Searls and David Weinberger, co-authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto, have put together a 10-part guide for how to stop mistaking the Internet for something it isn't. It contains some painfully obvious and often overlooked characteristics of the 'world of ends' we call the Internet."
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This is a first post for teh GNAA.
Suck it down bitches.
Is this a veiled attempted at trying to suggest that IPv4 is perfect, and that DNS is perfect, and that technologists, researchers, and (oh, evil) companies should not bother trying to fix or improve things? It pretty much reads that anything any company tries to do is stupid, and evil.
It sounds so 1997, like it should of been written when people still read Wired.
What a load of crap. Let's take it down one by one.
1. The Internet isn't complicated
The Internet is the most complicated structure ever designed. It encompasses millions of devices, many of them running completely different hardware and code, each device may contain millions of lines of code.
2. The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement.
The Internet is just a bunch of hardware networks connected together. The Internet isn't TCP/IP, DNS, etc, they're just the protocols that strings it together.
3. The Internet is stupid.
No, Doc, YOU'RE stupid. The telco net you compare the internet to is stupid in comparison. Telco nets won't repeat dropped packets like TCP/IP. He claims "the Internet doesn't know lots of things a smart network like the phone system knows: Identities, permissions, priorities, etc." which is flat-out wrong. For example, some backbones refuse passage to other networks that don't have cooperative agreements, so yes, it DOES know about identities, permissions, etc.
4. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.
No, adding value to the internet adds value. The only thing the internet provides is bandwidth. The only way to add value to the net is to add bandwidth or reduce cost. Next week my ISP is switching me from a 640/256 DSL line to a 1500/863 line, for less money even. That's added value.
5. All the Internet's value grows on its edges.
No, the internet has no edges. Doc is obviously one of those Flat Earth people. Sorry, but even Doc doesn't seem to know what the Internet IS. The Internet is a network. The Internet is not websites, Google, FTP sites, etc. Those are things that connect to the network.
6. Money moves to the suburbs.
Sorry, nobody wants to do both bandwidth and content anymore, not since the megabuck failures like AT&T @Home, who overreached themselves trying to do both.
7. The end of the world? Nah, the world of ends.
Again Doc confuses the network with its users. The Internet merely replaces some physical constraints (i.e. time, distance) with other constraints (cost, software barriers to entry, etc) and only within a limited range of intellectual informational abilities. Tha Intarweb can't wash my laundry or mow my lawn.
8. The Internet's three virtues:
A. No one owns it.
I own part of it, the part inside my router. Big Fucking Deal. Large sections of the net are owned by large corporations. It is easy to 0wn the net, just write the right worm and you can kill it deader than if a single owner threw a master switch.
B. Everyone can use it.
Yeah, if they have enough money. That leaves out about 98% of "everyone" on this planet.
C. Anyone can improve it.
I call BULLSHIT. The Internet is a network of data carriers that can only be "improved" by engineers working through cooperative standards, and those are costly to implement, so there is a natural tendency towards the status quo. "Improving" the internet isn't done by adding new websites with kooky new ideas, that has nothing to do with the network itself.
9. If the Internet is so simple, why have so many been so boneheaded about it?
Gee, I don't know, maybe because of all the stupid manifestos people write, that confuse the shit out of everyone? Maybe because alleged "pundits" like Searls don't even know the difference between a network and a website?
10. Some mistakes we can stop making already.
Ok Doc, you go first.
The web is not:
In your perfect world it isn't, but it is in this one. They musta missed that banner at the top of this page. Nope, no advertising there, no sir.
...Until they get their asses sued off by the some malcontent weenie for not controlling the content. Let's file this one under "wishful thinking".
...Economics disagree with you AGAIN. Sure, it's not a bad thing for you as an end user, but then you're not the one who's absorbing the cost to develope and maintain that "free" instant messenger service are you? Nor are you the one that has to worry about where those eyeballs go when they aren't viewing the advertisements that keep that service free.
Etc, etc... They have a point here and there, but Doc Searls and David Weinberger are living in the that hippie fantasy world where the net (and information) is free, baby, free! Maybe it shouldn't be some of what they argue, but the sad fact is it's nearly everything other people are mistaking it for.
Gotta love those flower childern...
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