This
story appeared on Network World Fusion at
http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2000/0110bradner.html
'Net Insider:
What will it look like?
By Scott Bradner
Network World, 01/10/00
The beginning of a new year, decade and century seems to get we pundits looking
back to history while at the same time trying to predict the future, and I am
not immune.
I started writing this column in January 1993. The network world was a very
different place at that time. I doubt that many, if any, observers in those
days could have predicted the Internet of today or the push toward the
convergence of telecommunications technologies that seems to be on the near
horizon.
In the early days of this column I spent time justifying an interest in the
Internet in the face of the prevailing opinion that it was going to be replaced
by something real. Newsweek and Time both said so in big cover stories on the
national information infrastructure. The editors of these publications also
admonished me for spending too much time on this toy called the Internet.
It's a bit different today, with Time giving its Person of the Year award to
Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos for changing the basic nature of the retail business,
and with the Internet figuring prominently in Newsweek's predictions for the
next century. Few now doubt the impact of the Internet.
But it's still a mysterious and worrisome thing to many, including fellow
columnist Thomas Nolle, who in the Dec. 20, 1999 issue of Network World doesn't
quite seem to understand that the Internet is international.
I think that two things enabled the Internet to become what it has become: the
end-to-end model and the lack of government regulations.
The end-to-end model in the Internet means that data flows between end systems
without anything special happening in the middle. In particular, you and I can
come up with a new application and try it out over the Internet without having
to get anyone's permission.
And the lack of government regulations regarding what one can and can not do
(in the name of increasing reliability, for example) permits these experiments
to continue.
But the Internet is getting too important in too many people's minds. It's
getting too important to be left to the technical people and entrepreneurs. So
governments will step in to help make sure the Internet succeeds, and they may
seriously reduce its chances of success in the process.
Arthur C. Clarke observed that any significantly advanced science is
indistinguishable from magic. Today's Internet would be close to magic when
viewed from January 1993. I hope that the Internet of 2010 is as magical when
viewed from the current era. I predict it will be, if governments don't help
too much and compromise the end-to-end model with too many regulations. But I
fear they will.
I should have a more positive attitude at the start of a new century, but I
don't.
Disclaimer: Harvard does not have formal opinions on centuries, so the above is
my own pessimism.
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