[ih] A paper that has something to to with the Internet

[John R. Levine]

> We were for two years getting this paper reviewed and polished. I think you
> should read it.

If it wasn't clear I did read it but the writing makes it difficult to tell what
point(s) you are trying to make.

> Many members of the Internet community have tried to dishearten me to leave
> them alone in their echo chamber. But I will remain in my place.

Oh, please.  Nobody here thinks that the Internet is perfect or that there's
nothing more to be said about its history.  (I think some of Corinne Cath's work
is pretty good.)  But an author needs at least a basic grasp of the technology
to say insightful things about it rather than guessing.

This paper keeps finding deep political mysteries in decisions for which the
motivation was and is obvious.  For example, on page 393, why was the DNS built
as a rooted hierarchy?  It's not a big secret, it's because there was and is no
other design that can be updated and scaled efficiently, certainly not on the
computers and networks available in the 1980s.  It might be interesting to ask
Paul Mockapetris if he considered other topologies (he does answer his mail) but
I doubt he did.  FYI, footnote 63 on that page is wrong, SQL is not
hierarchical, it's relational, and while SQL dates from the 1970s at IBM, there
was no ANSI version until 1986, long after the shape of the DNS was set.

And finally, with respect to reviews, I really have to wonder how reviewers who
didn't recognize the name of one of the best known history of science books ever
written or obvious errors like the footnote I mentioned could provide meaningful
reviews for this history of technology paper.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly