[ih] Lessons to be learnt from Internet history

[Bob Hinden]

Ian,

> 
> 1. Think long term.
> 
> Plenty of examples discussed here (good and bad). We need to plan for an Internet that is around forever, not for a quick fix that patches an immediate problem while giving rise to longer term problems.
> 

While this sounds good, I think in practice it has significant problems.  Many of the problems we see now were understood when the Internet was first developed, but we didn't have practical solutions to them.  Had we insisted on solving everything, it's very likely that nothing would have been done, or it would have been impractical to deploy given the technology at the time.  Just because you understand the problem, doesn't mean you can solve it.

I also note that "forever" is a very long time.  We aren't that good at predicting the future to know what will be needed in 10 years, much less a hundred years or more.  

Bob