[ih] The Sub-atomic Physics of The Internet

[Joe Touch]



>> On Aug 29, 2020, at 12:42 AM, Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl at gih.com> wrote:
>  If there's one problem with representation of the social media worlds as planets, it's that most people "live" on more than one planet, starting with significant Influencers who need to grow their audience.

It’s not my graphic; I agree it’s flawed as an analogy.

> So whilst there are plenty of parallel worlds, users travel already. I am quite pleased with the notion of parallel worlds, it's called "choice".

They don’t really travel so much as are multihomed and sometimes act as translator gateways between worlds. Again, not a great analogy but - as Jack pointed out - it’s where the analogy breaks down that informs the similarity between what the Internet has social network systems have evolved into and what the Internet was intended to avoid.

> Why would we want a single social gateway that would in effect become a monopoly that has the potential to lock any new social media provider out?

That’s like saying that IP is a monopoly that could prevent someone from joining the Internet. The Internet avoided the monopoly by both being a common lingua franca and being open/free (as a standard). 

By integrating experiences inside each of these systems, social networks - somewhat like custom vendor extensions to standard protocols, and even burying DNS inside HTTP - end up creating the very ‘world’ the Internet was trying to avoid...

Joe

> Kindest regards,
> 
> Olivier
> 
> On 29/08/2020 02:35, Joseph Touch via Internet-history wrote:
>> FWIW, that picture is of planets, not atoms. It perhaps more accurately represents the different platforms as worlds unto themselves, requiring substantial (and often not yet available) means of interplanetary transport to transit between.
>> 
>> Joe
>> 
>>> On Aug 28, 2020, at 12:39 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> We know that molecules are made of atoms, and atoms are made of quarks,
>>> and somewhere you get strings and other stuff I personally don't know
>>> much about.   I saw this infographic and it struck me as an interesting
>>> snapshot of the current internal "subatomic" structure of The Internet -
>>> not our traditional technical structure of circuits, routers et al, but
>>> the internal social structure of the population of The Internet.
>>> 
>>> https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-the-social-media-universe-in-2020/