Jon Postel Re: 202210301538.AYC

Sun Oct 30 22:41:45 UTC 2022

Dear Noah:

0)  "Iterations often times leads back to the beginning.": Thanks for 
distilling this thread to a concise principle. Perhaps your name was 
given with the foresight of this discussion? 😉

1)  As a newcomer to the arena, I have always been perplexed by the 
apparent collective NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome of the Internet 
community. While promoting openness, everything seems to go with "my way 
or noway". Of course, each Internet practice or convention was 
determined by some sort of consensus by majority opinion. However, once 
it gets going, it appears to be cast in concrete. There is a huge 
inertia against considering alternatives or improvements. Some of them 
even appear to be volunteered "policing" without full understanding of 
the background. Just like how practically all democratic governments are 
facing these days, a well-intended crowd can be led by an influencer to 
derail a social normality. It does not seem to me that strictly adhering 
to "one person one vote" rule can guide us toward a productive future.

2)  To follow what you are saying, I wonder how could we think "out of 
the box" or go "back to the future", before it is too late for our world 
wide communications infrastructure to serve as a reliable daily tool 
without being a distraction constantly? That is, four decades should be 
long enough for our Internet experiments to be reviewed, so that we can 
try navigating out of the current chaos, or start with an alternative.

Regards,

Abe (2022-10-30 18:41 EDT)

On 2022-10-30 12:47, Noah wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, 17 Oct 2022, 00:18 Randy Bush, <randy at psg.com> wrote:
>
>     my favorite is
>
>     It's perfectly appropriate to be upset. 
>
>
> Ack....
>
>     I thought of it in a slightly
>     different way--like a space that we were exploring and, in the
>     early days,
>     we figured out this consistent path through the space: IP, TCP,
>     and so on.
>
>
> the impact of IP, TCP in improving human life across the globe in the 
> last decades can not be overstated.
>
> Human enginuity through names like Google have enabled the age of 
> information and access to information through addresses and digital 
> trade routes have continued to ensure peace for humanity on the 
> positive side of the communications spectrum.
>
>     What's been happening over the last few years is that the IETF is
>     filling
>     the rest of the space with every alternative approach, not
>     necessarily any
>     better.  Every possible alternative is now being written down. 
>     And it's not
>     useful.  -- Jon Postel
>
>
> I suppose original human ideas and thoughts tends to stand the taste 
> of time.
>
> Iterations often times leads back to the beginning.
>
> Noah
>

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