Statements against new.net?

Wed Mar 14 19:01:50 UTC 2001

The problem is, of course, that it's NOT human-to-human communication.  It's
machine-to-machine communication, and human-to-machine communication, and
DNS was designed to create a mnemonic representation of a way to reach a
machine.

"Hey, tiger's down!"

"Hey, one nine two dot one six eight dot one oh three dot two five three's
down!"

(Even if you take an example with 192.168 being where ALL the addresses in
the network come from:  "Hey, one oh three dot two five three's down!")

In order for the machine to be able to determine what to do, it must be
programmed by the humans that created it.  In order for the machine to be
able to determine what to do in a situation that has more than one
possibly-correct resolution, it must be given a set of rules in order to
determine what needs to be done.

I will admit that it is possible (not plausible, but possible) for even an
email system to be programmed with enough intelligence to be able to deal
with the conflict.  However, the key word is 'system' -- defined as "all
pieces in a computing environment that contribute to a given piece of data
being processed the way the humans that are using it desire it to be
processed."  Which includes all mail servers (speaking SMTP), as well as all
mail clients (speaking SMTP, POP3, IMAP, whatever else), and name resolution
(DNS, /etc/hosts, NIS, whatever else), and even the underlying virtual
circuit technology (TCP/IPv[46]).  The entire system must be programmed in a
way that is consistent with how the user wants it to work... and getting
even two sites to upgrade to a newer version of sendmail at the same time is
difficult at best.  Much less to get two sites to change their DNS
configuration at the same time.

The point is: In order to do our jobs, we have to simplify these complex
systems we're responsible for as much as possible.  At least with a
globally-shared root zone, we're removing THAT piece of complexity from the
equation so we can determine what needs to be done at a higher level.

(Am I lazy?  Perhaps.  But I'd rather be lazy than crazy.)

-Mat Butler
Speaking for himself, not for his company.

-----Original Message-----
From: Vadim Antonov [mailto:avg at kotovnik.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2001 9:06 PM
To: Geoff Huston
Cc: nanog at merit.edu
Subject: Re: Statements against new.net? 

Of course, one may choose to treat RFC as a gospel, but to
me (and i hope to anyone interested in how cognition works
to the point of actually getting acquainted with the relevant
research) the attached passage sounds quite like a bunch of
random noise :)  Mostly because it assumes that human-to-human
communication is a reasoned process, concerned with consistent
intepretation.  In fact, most of what makes, for example, art
interesting is that it does not have a singular, well defined
interpretation.

--vadim

PS  This one, i guess, is brought to you by the Society Against
    De-Humanization Of Internet Users

    <tongue firmly in cheek>

PPS Yes, I think any form which _restricts_ potential models of
    communication is bad.  Such as forcing communications to be
    moderated by a singular hierarchical structure.  This whole
    thread won't be there in the first place if the scheme actually
    worked well in the real world.  Hierarchies do not scale and
    cannot adequately tolerate internalized adversity.

On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Geoff Huston wrote:

> At 3/14/01 07:56 AM, Vadim Antonov wrote:
> 
> 
> >That is based on the assumption that consistency is necessary
> >or desireable :)  Of course, it is dear to an engineer's mind,
> >but the case from the sociological point of view is far from
> >clear-cut.  In fact, way too many woes of human societies can
> >be (at least indirectly) attributed to the misguided attempts
> >to enforce consistency.
> 
> This assumption is explicitly addressed in the RFC - I quote:
> 
> ------
> 1.1. Maintenance of a Common Symbol Set
> 
> Effective communications between two parties requires two essential 
> preconditions:
> 
>    - The existence of a common symbol set, and
> 
>    - The existence of a common semantic interpretation of these symbols.
> Failure to meet the first condition implies a failure to communicate at 
> all, while failure to meet the second implies that the meaning of the 
> communication is lost.
> 
> In the case of a public communications system this condition of a common 
> symbol set with a common semantic interpretation must be further 
> strengthened to that of a unique symbol set with a unique semantic 
> interpretation. This condition of uniqueness allows any party to initiate
a 
> communication that can be received and understood by any other party. Such

> a condition rules out the ability to define a symbol within some bounded 
> context. In such a case, once the communication moves out of the context
of 
> interpretation in which it was defined, the meaning of the symbol becomes 
> lost.

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