[ih] Preparing for the splinternet

[Miles Fidelman]

Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
> On 13-Mar-22 05:30, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
>> On 3/12/2022 8:20 AM, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
>>>
>>> Connectivity & Interoperability are what make the Internet useful - and
>>> we've been going backwards since the day we opened the Internet to the
>>> public.
>>
>> That seems an overly-constrained assessment.  A casual view of the
>> activities prior to going public could reasonable produce the view that
>> there has been increasing entropy from the start.
>
> Correct. (And yes, it is indeed the 2nd law of thermodynamics in action,
> because the network is big enough and random enough for that to apply.)
>
> Also, there are many examples of segmentation of the network for
> technical, rather than political, reasons.
> https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8799.html

Well sure... there are lots of examples of, and reasons for, private 
networks.   But when it comes to a network that was originally designed 
for "resource sharing" and collaboration - segmentation is USUALLY a bad 
thing.

And, where some of it is driven by security and privacy considerations, 
it sure seems like a lot more of it is about market capture and 
segmentation (as in the days when AOL, Compuserve, et. al. competed on 
the basis of who had more email users), and pure commercial gain 
(selling private email systems and portals to doctors, hospitals, and 
banks - rather than using secure email).

And that's before we get into "political" reasons - like building entire 
media networks around disinformation (can you say "fake news?").

Miles Fidelman

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown