World of Ends

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 07:15:42 -0800
From: "Joseph C. Pistritto" <jcp () jcphome com>
Subject: World of Ends
X-Sender: jcp@192.168.200.2
To: dave () farber net

Quite good for a short piece.  I thought it was worth reading.

http://www.worldofends.com/

For IP if you want to.
  -jcp-


World of Ends


What the Internet Is and
How to Stop Mistaking It
for Something Else.


by
Doc Searls and
David Weinberger

Last update: 4.28.03

There are mistakes and there are mistakes.

Some mistakes we learn from. For example: Thinking that selling toys for 
pets on the Web is a great way to get rich. We're not going to do that again.

Other mistakes we insist on making over and over. For example, thinking that:
   * ...the Web, like television, is a way to hold eyeballs still while 
advertisers spray them with messages.
   * ...the Net is something that telcos and cable companies should 
filter, control and otherwise "improve."
   * ... it's a bad thing for users to communicate between different kinds 
of instant messaging systems on the Net.
   * ...the Net suffers from a lack of regulation to protect industries 
that feel threatened by it.

When it comes to the Net, a lot of us suffer from Repetitive Mistake 
Syndrome. This is especially true for magazine and newspaper publishing, 
broadcasting, cable television, the record industry, the movie industry, 
and the telephone industry, to name just six.

Thanks to the enormous influence of those industries in Washington, 
Repetitive Mistake Syndrome also afflicts lawmakers, regulators and even 
the courts. Last year Internet radio, a promising new industry that 
threatened to give listeners choices far exceeding anything on the 
increasingly variety-less (and technologically  stone-age) AM and FM bands, 
was shot in its cradle. Guns, ammo and the occasional "Yee-Haw!" were 
provided by the recording industry and the Digital Millennium Copyright 
Act, which embodies all the fears felt by Hollywood's alpha dinosaurs when 
they lobbied the Act through Congress in 1998.

"The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it," 
<http://www.toad.com/gnu/>John Gilmore famously said. And it's true. In the 
long run, Internet radio will succeed. Instant messaging systems will 
interoperate. Dumb companies will get smart or die. Stupid laws will be 
killed or replaced. But then, as John Maynard Keynes also famously said, 
"In the long run, we're all dead."

All we need to do is pay attention to what the Internet really is. It's not 
hard. The Net isn't rocket science. It isn't even 6th grade science fair, 
when you get right down to it. We can end the tragedy of Repetitive Mistake 
Syndrome in our lifetimes ­ and save a few trillion dollars’ worth of dumb 
decisions ­ if we can just remember one simple fact: the Net is a world of 
ends. You're at one end, and everybody and everything else are at the other 
ends.

Sure, that’s a feel-good statement about everyone having value on the Net, 
etc. But it’s also the basic rock-solid fact about the Net's technical 
architecture. And the Internet’s value is founded in its technical 
architecture.

Fortunately, the true nature of the Internet isn’t hard to understand. In 
fact, just a fistful of statements stands between Repetitive Mistake 
Syndrome and Enlightenment…

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