From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 1997 06:33:24 +0800
To: "K. N. Cukier" <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: Why the White amendment is a good idea (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199709251628_MC2-21D3-9A59@compuserve.com>
Message-ID: <v03110708b05084f8c876@[139.167.130.248]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 4:24 pm -0400 on 9/25/97, K. N. Cukier wrote:

>The Domain Name System is completely hierarchical.

Wrong example. And not for long. Wanna bet a buck that that it isn't in,
say, 3 years?

> Moreover, Jon Postel of IANA represents the Net's central authority due to:

Postel isn't exactly a good example of this, either. He's made himself in
charge of controlling the uncontrollable, after all. This kind of "great
man theory of the internet" is quaintly romantic, yes? It's certainly just
as industrial as romanticism was...

> 1. the IP number allocations,

Bogosity alert. IPV6. Even the latest tweaks to IPV4, fer chrissakes...

False "scarcity". And so your next straw man is? Ah. Here it is.

> 2. the DNS "root", and

Which, technically, doesn't have to be "owned" by anyone to stay
maintained. All you need is an agreement by the TLD holders, which you'll
get, or they go out of business. Look, Ma, no central control. Feh. *How*
many permutations and combinations of 3 alphanumeric characters are there?
Um, do we *need* three-letter TLDs? I thought not...

Actually, I predict that the whole NSI sham will be a bad dream within,
say, two Moore's cycles, or 14 internet years, or 3 meatyears, which is, of
course, how I predicated my bet...

>3. the technical
> standards, such as port numbers, etc.

Technical standards and market reality are not mutually exclusive. :-).
There are lots of technically hierarchical things which are controlled by a
geodesic market. The NYSE, or, better, NASDAQ, or, even better, the entire
currency market, are great examples. Notice that each one of those is more
geodesic -- and much bigger -- than the next one.

What? The Internet? Oh. That's right. I forget the IETF... ;-).

Sheesh...

So far, the stuff you've thrown out here to "refute" what I said are the
exceptions which prove the rule.

Face it. It's cheaper to be "out of control" than "in control". That's what
computers are for. Right?

I mean, the more computers you have, the more standards matter, and the
more standards you use, the less "control" you need. The less "control" you
need, the less centralization matters, which, if you'll recall briefly, was
my point.

> Unless there was a certain degree of
> centralized control, in an engineering perspective, the Net "Would Not
> Work."

Excuse me while I recover my composure. And clean up a bit. I laughed so
hard at that one, I blew rootbeer out my nose, all over my poor antiquated
PB180... Okay. It's clean now. And, so...

Look. By your above logic, Microsoft Network would have been a huge hit.
They would have bought AOL *and* Compuserve. Heck. We'd still be using
mainframes, or something. Centralized control went out with economies of
scale.

> That's the fact, Jack -- n'est-ce pas? Yes, it is *possible* to do
> away with these centralized functions, and this is happening now, in a very
> non-public way.

Oh? Like there's a secret cabal out there "managing" the massive
decentralization of everything from  steel to financial services to fast
food to government itself? Right.

Hate to break your bubble, Bunky, but all of this is the result of natural
forces. The market. (Yes, Virginia, the market.) If there wasn't a market
for, say, telephony in the 1920's, there wouldn't have been a market for
automated switching, which got us semiconductors, which got us your
precious IANA when the market for semiconductors created the internet.

And, boys and girls, the *only* reason we still have central control of the
internet is that internet was originally a socialist, hierarchically
organized entity created by another hierarchical entity called a nation
state.

Just like the the nation state itself, IANA, and all other central
"control" is surfacting away. Well, more like choking in it's own
excrement, but soap is a prettier metaphor than the latter...

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga







-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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