4 ms·

And the role of regulation (US vs. Microsoft)? And non-profit advocacy groups (W3C)?

by mturmon 14y ago

robomartin 14y ago
If you are looking for the public sector to somehow be a hero in this story, well, in my opinion it simply isn't going to happen. The public sector investment in any conceivable category is almost beyond insignificant at this stage of the game in the context of what it has taken to get here. I have yet to see a transcript of a single Senator, Representative, President or any policy-maker with influence pre-dating the Internet and WWW that describes how they are going to take steps A, B, C and D and invest in E, F, G and H because of this thing called the "Internet" that will be a big deal. In other words, nobody had a clue. It just happened and private enterprise made it happen. Not the public sector, regulation, or government in almost any way one could imagine. In fact the inter-university network was largely a part of scientists trying to come-up with a way to communicate with each other. There was no government mandate or higher vision that delivered a document to these guys and said: "Lease these communications lines, connect your PDP 11/34's to them and build something that will do A, B, C, D". I know that in pro-government or pro-public sector circles it is quite romantic to get behind the idea that we owe the Internet and the WWW to our government, but that is very far from the truth. Few things of real worth happen due to master planning. This is particularly true of things that actually work well. Yes, we are great at killing people in massive numbers. I mean, name one Senator today who is able to articulate --and has been driving-- the next major idea in science and technology. Please don't name anyone behind solar or wind power. Private enterprise has been bleeding money for decades in those industries to get it to the point where now a Senator might actually recognize it as something interesting to pursue. I'm talking about things that do not exists today. And, BTW, it is perfectly OK to disagree. If you are invested in your belief system it isn't my intention, to any degree imaginable, to try to change how you think. Only you can do that. I am merely stating my position here. Chances are you think I am completely wrong, and that's OK.
- ucee054 14y ago
  Few things of real worth happen due to master planning Those few things include Japan, South Korea and Singapore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaibatsu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaibatsu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Economy,_Trade_and_Industry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Economy,_Trade_and_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Development_Board http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Development_Board
  - robomartin 14y ago
    These are examples of economic war (Sun Tsu) tactics rather than "things of real worth". For example, I can't think of many notable inventions that came out of any of the associations you mentioned. Your examples are simply examples of amassing a centrally controlled industrial and economic army in order to capture territory. It's war without bullets. What I am talking about are things like finding the cure for cancer. That is not going to be centrally planned. You can throw all the money you want at the problem, government or private. There might very well be a kid who is still pooping in his diapers today who will stumble upon the solution in another twenty years. No amount of money is going to dig-up that solution until it, well, just happens. Will it happen? Sure. Eventually. But you are not going to centrally plan it. Even if you setup a government laboratory to hire every single cancer researcher coming out of every university on the planet central planning might very well fail. For all we know it will be a marine biologist with a unique view of cell biology who will discover the solution. If you've read a few of my posts over time it should not come as a surprise that I am a huge proponent of the private free enterprise approach. I think governments, with the passing of time, are becoming less and less relevant and are horrible blunt instruments that try to micro-manage our lives and do a really bad job of it. In the past few decades, regardless of political party affiliation, the US government has given us a perfect living example of how badly things can degenerate when politicians are solely driven by their need and desire to remain in power. Years go by and nothing happens. Or, even worst, the things that do happen are driven purely by the need to manipulate the population for votes. Humankind has moved from feudal slavery to the kind of freedom we have today for a reason. That did not work. This works better. I think our future has far less government in the context of an educated, responsible and self-reliant citizenry using private resources to make everyone's lives better. Of course, these things happen slowly, and they should. Too many corner cases to deal with.
- ucee054 14y ago
  It just happened and private enterprise made it happen. No actually. The total amount of private sector activity (measured in dollars) in this space may dwarf anything the public sector put in, but that's businesses setting up their own websites etc etc etc. The amount of business involvement in the web which represents invention is tiny. It was Compuserve, AOL and Lotus Notes that just happened, because the private sector was completely incapable of making anything to rival the Web or the Internet. The Internet was nurtured in the public sector and commerce was specifically excluded. Similarly, the Web was nurtured at CERN. The private sector contributed nothing. Of course, after the Internet had been developed already, it was decided to let the private sector in.
  - robomartin 14y ago
    Let's just disagree. I really don't see it your way. Businesses didn't just setup websites. The entirety of the modern internet (and web) in most countries was built privately. You would not enjoy a DSL connection today without quite literally fortunes having been put on the line to develop, install, run and sell the infrastructure. My key point is that, if we are talking CERN and the WWW, this was not, in any way a program that originated by any one government. It was scientists trying to solve a problem. No politician devised, specified, directed, funded and pushed for the development of the WWW at CERN. It just happened because they were trying to improve the way they communicated with each other. To me when someone say something akin to "the public sector created the WWW" or "the/a government created the WWW" it means something very different than scientist at a research organization who were trying to fix some problems and happen to create something that went big. For me to attribute anything to government it must have clear genesis in government. A perfect example of this is Obama-care. There is no imaginable way to claim that Obama-care was created by the private sector. It is a clear case of something that was created by a government and handed down to us. Claiming that the WWW was a public sector project, a government project or something we ought to hold-up high as an example of what central planning can create is --again, my opinion-- absurd. It's like saying Linux is a centrally-planned public sector/government project because so many of the early contributors were in government-funded academic institutions. I could not envision anyone saying we owe Linux to our or any government. In Tim Berners-Lee's own words: "The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project aims to allow all links to be made to any information anywhere. [...] The WWW project was started to allow high energy physicists to share data, news, and documentation. We are very interested in spreading the web to other areas, and having gateway servers for other data. Collaborators welcome!" Yes, the European Commission and other public and private entities (MIT) would join forces later on to nail down protocols and such things in order to make ensure interoperability. Again, a natural effect. In fact, you could have taken government entirely out of the picture and this standardization would have probably happened just the same as universities and research labs got together to make the system work more universally. It's the story of computing. There are many standards in a myriad of industries that were developed ad-hoc at first and later refined and ratified by key commercial and non-commercial players in the industry. The history of the Internet --as distinct from the WWW which one could think of as an application that runs on top of the Internet-- is a little more convoluted. Depending on how you want to interpret things it took thirty to forty years for the Internet to surface from inception in 1960/1970 in a form that enabled the WWW to be developed. The primary motivator and driver for ARPANET had nothing whatsoever to do with us being able to buy books online. It was a purely military project from the start that mutated into civilian use at one point. No consumer-side foresight existed in its development at all. That's why it is a bit disingenuous to credit the US government with the creation of what we call the Internet today. Much like civilian aviation had its roots in military aviation, the roots of what we call the Internet today are in military technology. It would be insane to say that the government, in a centrally-planned sort of way, invented civilian aviation. Just the same, I don't think it is fair to credit government or the public sector with the creation and development of the modern civilian Internet. These are vastly different things. The scary proposition here is that we ought to support every military initiative because they might develop into amazingly useful civilian projects in the future. I fundamentally reject the idea that we have to continually develop better killing tools in order to derive peace-time benefits. I could be wrong. The Wikipedia page on the history of the Internet is well worth reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet So is this timeline: http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/ http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/

And the role of regulation (US vs. Microsoft)? And non-profit advocacy groups (W3C)?

by mturmon 14y ago

And the role of regulation (US vs. Microsoft)? And non-profit advocacy groups (W3C)?

If you are looking for the public sector to somehow be a hero in this story, well, in my opinion it simply isn't going to happen. The public sector investment in any conceivable category is almost beyond insignificant at this stage of the game in the context of what it has taken to get here. I have yet to see a transcript of a single Senator, Representative, President or any policy-maker with influence pre-dating the Internet and WWW that describes how they are going to take steps A, B, C and D and invest in E, F, G and H because of this thing called the "Internet" that will be a big deal. In other words, nobody had a clue. It just happened and private enterprise made it happen. Not the public sector, regulation, or government in almost any way one could imagine. In fact the inter-university network was largely a part of scientists trying to come-up with a way to communicate with each other. There was no government mandate or higher vision that delivered a document to these guys and said: "Lease these communications lines, connect your PDP 11/34's to them and build something that will do A, B, C, D". I know that in pro-government or pro-public sector circles it is quite romantic to get behind the idea that we owe the Internet and the WWW to our government, but that is very far from the truth. Few things of real worth happen due to master planning. This is particularly true of things that actually work well. Yes, we are great at killing people in massive numbers. I mean, name one Senator today who is able to articulate --and has been driving-- the next major idea in science and technology. Please don't name anyone behind solar or wind power. Private enterprise has been bleeding money for decades in those industries to get it to the point where now a Senator might actually recognize it as something interesting to pursue. I'm talking about things that do not exists today. And, BTW, it is perfectly OK to disagree. If you are invested in your belief system it isn't my intention, to any degree imaginable, to try to change how you think. Only you can do that. I am merely stating my position here. Chances are you think I am completely wrong, and that's OK.

ucee054 14y ago
Few things of real worth happen due to master planning Those few things include Japan, South Korea and Singapore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaibatsu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaibatsu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Economy,_Trade_and_Industry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Economy,_Trade_and_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Development_Board http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Development_Board
- robomartin 14y ago
  These are examples of economic war (Sun Tsu) tactics rather than "things of real worth". For example, I can't think of many notable inventions that came out of any of the associations you mentioned. Your examples are simply examples of amassing a centrally controlled industrial and economic army in order to capture territory. It's war without bullets. What I am talking about are things like finding the cure for cancer. That is not going to be centrally planned. You can throw all the money you want at the problem, government or private. There might very well be a kid who is still pooping in his diapers today who will stumble upon the solution in another twenty years. No amount of money is going to dig-up that solution until it, well, just happens. Will it happen? Sure. Eventually. But you are not going to centrally plan it. Even if you setup a government laboratory to hire every single cancer researcher coming out of every university on the planet central planning might very well fail. For all we know it will be a marine biologist with a unique view of cell biology who will discover the solution. If you've read a few of my posts over time it should not come as a surprise that I am a huge proponent of the private free enterprise approach. I think governments, with the passing of time, are becoming less and less relevant and are horrible blunt instruments that try to micro-manage our lives and do a really bad job of it. In the past few decades, regardless of political party affiliation, the US government has given us a perfect living example of how badly things can degenerate when politicians are solely driven by their need and desire to remain in power. Years go by and nothing happens. Or, even worst, the things that do happen are driven purely by the need to manipulate the population for votes. Humankind has moved from feudal slavery to the kind of freedom we have today for a reason. That did not work. This works better. I think our future has far less government in the context of an educated, responsible and self-reliant citizenry using private resources to make everyone's lives better. Of course, these things happen slowly, and they should. Too many corner cases to deal with.
ucee054 14y ago
It just happened and private enterprise made it happen. No actually. The total amount of private sector activity (measured in dollars) in this space may dwarf anything the public sector put in, but that's businesses setting up their own websites etc etc etc. The amount of business involvement in the web which represents invention is tiny. It was Compuserve, AOL and Lotus Notes that just happened, because the private sector was completely incapable of making anything to rival the Web or the Internet. The Internet was nurtured in the public sector and commerce was specifically excluded. Similarly, the Web was nurtured at CERN. The private sector contributed nothing. Of course, after the Internet had been developed already, it was decided to let the private sector in.
- robomartin 14y ago
  Let's just disagree. I really don't see it your way. Businesses didn't just setup websites. The entirety of the modern internet (and web) in most countries was built privately. You would not enjoy a DSL connection today without quite literally fortunes having been put on the line to develop, install, run and sell the infrastructure. My key point is that, if we are talking CERN and the WWW, this was not, in any way a program that originated by any one government. It was scientists trying to solve a problem. No politician devised, specified, directed, funded and pushed for the development of the WWW at CERN. It just happened because they were trying to improve the way they communicated with each other. To me when someone say something akin to "the public sector created the WWW" or "the/a government created the WWW" it means something very different than scientist at a research organization who were trying to fix some problems and happen to create something that went big. For me to attribute anything to government it must have clear genesis in government. A perfect example of this is Obama-care. There is no imaginable way to claim that Obama-care was created by the private sector. It is a clear case of something that was created by a government and handed down to us. Claiming that the WWW was a public sector project, a government project or something we ought to hold-up high as an example of what central planning can create is --again, my opinion-- absurd. It's like saying Linux is a centrally-planned public sector/government project because so many of the early contributors were in government-funded academic institutions. I could not envision anyone saying we owe Linux to our or any government. In Tim Berners-Lee's own words: "The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project aims to allow all links to be made to any information anywhere. [...] The WWW project was started to allow high energy physicists to share data, news, and documentation. We are very interested in spreading the web to other areas, and having gateway servers for other data. Collaborators welcome!" Yes, the European Commission and other public and private entities (MIT) would join forces later on to nail down protocols and such things in order to make ensure interoperability. Again, a natural effect. In fact, you could have taken government entirely out of the picture and this standardization would have probably happened just the same as universities and research labs got together to make the system work more universally. It's the story of computing. There are many standards in a myriad of industries that were developed ad-hoc at first and later refined and ratified by key commercial and non-commercial players in the industry. The history of the Internet --as distinct from the WWW which one could think of as an application that runs on top of the Internet-- is a little more convoluted. Depending on how you want to interpret things it took thirty to forty years for the Internet to surface from inception in 1960/1970 in a form that enabled the WWW to be developed. The primary motivator and driver for ARPANET had nothing whatsoever to do with us being able to buy books online. It was a purely military project from the start that mutated into civilian use at one point. No consumer-side foresight existed in its development at all. That's why it is a bit disingenuous to credit the US government with the creation of what we call the Internet today. Much like civilian aviation had its roots in military aviation, the roots of what we call the Internet today are in military technology. It would be insane to say that the government, in a centrally-planned sort of way, invented civilian aviation. Just the same, I don't think it is fair to credit government or the public sector with the creation and development of the modern civilian Internet. These are vastly different things. The scary proposition here is that we ought to support every military initiative because they might develop into amazingly useful civilian projects in the future. I fundamentally reject the idea that we have to continually develop better killing tools in order to derive peace-time benefits. I could be wrong. The Wikipedia page on the history of the Internet is well worth reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet So is this timeline: http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/ http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/