[ih] Internet History Lives on the Internet?

Sun Feb 24 16:07:28 PST 2019

not all data that we might want to preserve needs to be publicly accessible.

v

On Sun, Feb 24, 2019 at 6:23 PM Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org> wrote:

> I don't know much about SOLID, but it appears to be addressing the problem
> of handling individuals' personal private data, and controlling who can
> access it.   What I described was somewhat of the inverse - making data
> public, survivable, and accessible to everyone.  But maybe there's overlap
> in any implementation.  Certainly there are lots of pieces already in place
> somewhere, as evidenced by the success of viruses, pirated videos, and the
> like.
>
> The Internet has made possible new sorts of social mechanisms.  What I'm
> imagining is more like applying Internet-style "crowd-funding" to the
> problem of a historical archive, where people contribute cycles and bytes
> rather than euros and dollars.
>
> That wasn't possible pre-Internet, but it is now.   Thinking "outside the
> box" is a lot easier.  The Internet made the box much bigger....
>
> /Jack
>
>
> On 2/24/19 2:45 PM, Vint Cerf wrote:
>
> isn't that what SOLID is supposed to do?
>
> v
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 24, 2019 at 1:47 PM Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org> wrote:
>
>> [Changed the subject line]
>>
>> I read the recent messages on the forum just before going to sleep, and
>> then I had a dream....literally.
>>
>> There's a whole different perspective on Internet History that might be
>> very revealing.  Instead of questions like "Who built the Internet?",
>> perhaps also ask "Who paid for the Internet?"  If historians "followed
>> the money" like many other investigators, they might find some
>> interesting insights.  I didn't realize until today that the IETF is
>> funded by ... Me!   Through my payments for my .org domain, maybe by now
>> I've paid for an urn or two of coffee at an IETF meeting.
>>
>> But my dream was of how to fund some kind of Internet repository of
>> historical materials, not subject to the management whims or financial
>> success of an "institution".   My dream reminded me that such mechanisms
>> already exist, have been running at scale for years, are self-funded,
>> and seem essentially impossible to excise even when governments or
>> industry giants try to do so.
>>
>> My dream is of a Benevolent BotNet (apologies to my alma mater, BBN).
>> Instead of hosting and propagating malware and viruses, or stealing
>> computer cycle to mine cryptocurrency, the BBN would simply store,
>> replicate, and distribute historical materials on demand.  No doubt
>> Richard's comment on Pirate Bay triggered this part of the dream.
>>
>> Such technology obviously exists, and survives despite serious efforts
>> to eradicate it.  Where the Internet was coopted for evil, perhaps the
>> evil could be coopted for good?
>>
>> Maybe even better would be a mechanism that didn't rely on theft and
>> subterfuge at all.  Perhaps something akin to the SETI mechanisms, where
>> people voluntarily donate their computer resources to analyze radio
>> signals, by simply downloading a piece of code and allowing it to run on
>> their computers.
>>
>> So, my dream was that some new software appears, which is freely
>> downloaded by thousands or millions of people around the world, which
>> uses a few GB of the disk on their machines, and stores historical
>> material in a redundant, highly survivable, persistent, distrubuted
>> historical warehouse.   One, or many, search engines (go Google!, Bing!,
>> DuckDuckGo!) would allow people to find material in the warehouse.
>> Anyone could contribute material to the historical archive by simply
>> placing a copy into the disk area of their machine that they've shared,
>> from where it would be automatically distributed and replicated.
>>
>> Perhaps this is one or more apps that can be downloaded.  Or perhaps a
>> plug in or extension to popular browsers.  Or maybe an addition to
>> existing mechanisms like BitTorrent.  Much of the code already exists,
>> as evidenced by the millions of computers unwittingly participating in a
>> Botnet, or willingly running code like SETI.
>>
>> Dave's offer of disk space is just the start.  I suspect many people
>> would contribute some unused chunk of their computers and network
>> capacity.  I have a few Terabytes on my NAS that are empty...you
>> probably do too.   With enough participants, the BBN becomes
>> self-suficient even as people come and go.
>>
>> All it would seem to take is for someone to sit down and write the
>> code....in the classic Internet spirit of Rough Consensus and Running
>> Code.
>>
>> Dave....?
>>
>> /Jack Haverty
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2/24/19 7:42 AM, Dave Taht wrote:
>> > Joe Touch <touch at strayalpha.com> writes:
>> >
>> >> On Feb 23, 2019, at 12:42 PM, Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>     But "internet-history at postel.org", and others like it, even RFC
>> >>     repositories, likely exist at the whim of their sponsor.
>> >>
>> >> Indeed - even assuming volunteers run them - they’re’s still the issue
>> >> of hosting and net access.
>> >>
>> >> I have old repositories (end2end-interest, for one) that even the ISOC
>> >> has declined to host (even though the E2E-RG originated there).
>> >>
>> >> Then again, if you want to see the worst of “free riders”, go attend
>> >> an IETF. Companies send armies there for free training and free
>> >> consulting.
>> >>
>> >> PS - speaking as list admin, if anyone wants to offer a place to host
>> >> this list more reliably and archivally, please do let me know (contact
>> >> me directly off-list).
>> > My email list server currently lives on linode in the cloud. The cost is
>> > $5/month for 25GB of SSD storage. ( https://www.linode.com/pricing
>> > ). Has IPv6 and IPv4. It's paid for via a patreon donation.
>> >
>> > It's not like I'm using much of that box - or the bandwidth available -
>> > how big are these archives?
>> >
>> > I wouldn't mind sharing that existing list server, but I long ago
>> > switched to violating whatever RFC it was that said starttls was a
>> > "should" - to *mandate* starttls only - which cuts down on spam (and
>> > sigh, about 13% of my measured potential correspondents, still). The
>> > biggest administrative cost I'd had was dealing with spam.
>> >
>> > If that's not an acceptable policy for these lists/archives, well, go
>> > burn the 5 bucks/mo on yer own.
>> >
>> >
>> >> Joe
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> _______
>> >> internet-history mailing list
>> >> internet-history at postel.org
>> >> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>> >> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.
>> _______
>> internet-history mailing list
>> internet-history at postel.org
>> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.
>>
>
>
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