4 ms·

The internet as a whole is one giant, hacked together system. There's no doubt that, with a magic reset button, we could build an internet that is vastly more s

The internet as a whole is one giant, hacked together system. There's no doubt that, with a magic reset button, we could build an internet that is vastly more secure, efficient and reliable than the current one. But that's the nature of an emergent, distributed technology like the internet. Once the concept was born we ran with what we had, and once adoption hit a certain point it became impossible to start over again and do it correctly. I see it as an innate challenge that comes with the domain, like EM interference for electrical engineering.

SquareWheel 10y ago
I'm not sure a reset is really necessary. "The internet" is abstracted and modular enough that parts can be swapped out and improved without needing to start over. Internet Protocol is being upgraded to IPv6 (any decade now), HTTP/2 is replacing the old HTTP 1.x (thanks SPDY!), TLS has replaced SSL, brotli is stepping up for gzip/deflate. Who knows, maybe QUIC[1] will be next. Even on the programming side we have new languages entering the fray. Javascript has recently gotten huge upgrades, and WebAssembly has a lot of momentum behind it as well. So on almost all layers we're able to swap in new protocols or technologies and everything still continues to function. It's actually a very robust system when you think about it. Still, there are a few sore spots. DNS is in need of a redesign in my opinion. It wouldn't be impossible to replace, but not easy either. A number of concepts in web design (such as "document flow") probably aren't going away either. But newer technologies (canvas, WebGL? who knows) may eventually replace the traditional DOM model. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUIC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUIC
- goatlover 10y ago
  The web isn't the internet. Someone else posted a quote (by Alan Kay?) about how the internet was an example of brilliant design, while the web was an example of amateurish engineering.

SquareWheel 10y ago

I'm not sure a reset is really necessary. "The internet" is abstracted and modular enough that parts can be swapped out and improved without needing to start over. Internet Protocol is being upgraded to IPv6 (any decade now), HTTP/2 is replacing the old HTTP 1.x (thanks SPDY!), TLS has replaced SSL, brotli is stepping up for gzip/deflate. Who knows, maybe QUIC[1] will be next. Even on the programming side we have new languages entering the fray. Javascript has recently gotten huge upgrades, and WebAssembly has a lot of momentum behind it as well. So on almost all layers we're able to swap in new protocols or technologies and everything still continues to function. It's actually a very robust system when you think about it. Still, there are a few sore spots. DNS is in need of a redesign in my opinion. It wouldn't be impossible to replace, but not easy either. A number of concepts in web design (such as "document flow") probably aren't going away either. But newer technologies (canvas, WebGL? who knows) may eventually replace the traditional DOM model. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUIC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUIC

goatlover 10y ago
The web isn't the internet. Someone else posted a quote (by Alan Kay?) about how the internet was an example of brilliant design, while the web was an example of amateurish engineering.