Subject: Re: [irtf-discuss] Why the World Must Resist Calls to Undermine the Internet

From: willi uebelherr <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2022 15:06:32 -0300

Why the World Must Resist Calls to Undermine the Internet
Andrew Sullivan, 02.03.2022
https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2022/03/why-the-world-must-resist-calls-to-undermine-the-internet/

Dear friends,

Andrew Sullivan rightly pointed out in his text that "the Internet is 
for everyone". Absolutely right in the idea.

But the reality is different. The technical players acting today are not 
interested in a free global communication of people, but in a 
commercialization and capitalization of their needs for communication.

This result did not come about by chance, but was already the essential 
guiding principle at the beginning by the government of the USA under 
Ronald Reagan. The original concept of "the inter-connection of local 
Net-works", which is necessarily based on local networks, became a 
privately and state organized system of interconnected star-systems, 
"the inter-connection of private Star-Systems".

This interconnection of star-systems creates the possibility to organize 
access and exclusion according to arbitrary criteria. And we see today 
that the system of a free global communication has turned into a field 
of censorship and private control mania, organized by countries calling 
themselves "the West". Already the naming points to organized bullshit, 
because the planet is a sphere and not a disk and thus any directions 
can lead to the same goal.

The actors of this fragmentation and breaking of a free human 
communication "without borders" are those who call themselves 
representatives of a "free world", but in fact trample every diversity 
with military boots. Every form of racial mania a'la Cecil Rhodes is put 
back on the table. Lying and hypocrisy is the form of communication that 
is now elevated to the absolute.

The idea of telecommunication in the form of an Internet that does not 
adhere to private or governmental or geographical boundaries, as we saw 
with Jonathan Postel, was destroyed at the very beginning of the life of 
an Internet. Today we see what a monster of small-minded power madness 
it has developed into, where only private profit interests and state 
delusions of control apply.

The alternative always remains. A telecommunication in the form of an 
internet, which rests on local networks and thus enables free access to 
all people of our planet, independent of their social situation and 
geographical position.

That and only that is a "net of nets".

with kind regards, willi
Asuncion, Paraguay

in german -----------------------------------------------------------

Liebe freunde,

Andrew Sullivan hat zu Recht in seinem Text darauf hingewiesen, "the 
Internet is for everyone". Absolut richtig in der Idee.

Aber die Wirklichkeit sieht anders aus. Die heute agierenden technischen 
Akteure sind nicht an einer freien globalen Kommunikation der Menschen 
interessiert, sondern an einer Kommerzialisierung und Kapitalisierung 
ihrer Beduerfnisse nach Kommunikation.

Dieses Resultat ist nicht zufaellig entstanden, sondern war bereits zu 
Anfang das wesentliche Leitmotiv durch die Regierung der USA unter 
Ronald Reagan. Das urspruengliche Konzept "the Inter-connection of local 
Net-works", das ja notwendig auf lokalen Netzwerken ruht, wurde zu einem 
privat und staatlich organisierten System von verbundenen Sternsystemen, 
"the inter-connection of private Star-Systems".

Diese Verbindung von Stern-Systemen schafft die Moeglichkeit, nach 
beliebigsten Kriterien den Zugang und Ausschluss zu organisieren. Und 
wir sehen heute, dass sich das System einer freien globalen 
Kommunikation zu einem Feld der Zensur und privatem Kontrollwahn 
entwickelt hat, das von Laendern organisiert wird, die sich "der Westen" 
nennen. Schon die Namensgebung deutet auf organisierten Schwachsinn, 
weil der Planet eine Kugel und keine Scheibe ist und damit beliebige 
Richtungen zum gleichen Ziel fuehren koennen.

Die Akteure dieser Zersplitterung und Zerbrechung einer freien 
menschlichen Kommunikation "ohne Grenzen" sind jene, die sich als 
Vertreter einer "freien Welt" bezeichnen, tatsaechlich aber jede 
Diversitaet mit militaerischen Stiefeln zertrampeln. Jede Form des 
Rassenwahns a'la Cecil Rhodes wird wieder auf den Tisch gestellt. Die 
Luege und Heuchelei ist diejenige Form der Kommunikation, die nun zum 
absoluten Mass erhoben wird.

Die Idee einer Telekommunikation in Form eines Internet, das sich nicht 
an private oder staatliche oder geografische Grenzen haelt, wie wir es 
bei Jonathan Postel sahen, wurde schon zu Beginn der Lebensphase eines 
Internet zerstoert. Heute sehen wir, zu welchem Monster kleingeistigem 
Machtwahns es sich entwickelt hat, wo nur noch private Profitinteressen 
und staatlicher Kontrollwahn gelten.

Die Alternative bleibt immer existent. Eine Telekommunikation in Form 
eines internet, das auf lokalen Netzwerken ruht und so allen Menschen 
unseres Planeten den freien Zugang ermoeglicht, unabhaengig von ihrer 
sozialen Lage und geografischen Position.

Das und nur das ist ein "Netz der Netze".

mit lieben gruessen, willi
Asuncion, Paraguay

---

From: David Lloyd-Jones <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2022 04:49:16 -0400

Willi,

You have shown us that you are full of good sentiments. Quite a lot of
them. Very good ones. I assume that you know something about the start and
development of the Internet but no such knowledge has found its way into
your long post.
.
First proposed by Bacon in the fifteenth century or so, the 'Net was a
solid policy proposal made by Vannevar Bush in 1945. It was made possible
by the invention of packet-switching in the mid-1960 to 70s. Johnny Foster,
JFK's science advisor in 1961, was the first person I know of to have done
solid financing of the effort.  Bush was working on wide-scale computer
networking, along with many other things, when I met him in his
utterly false "retirement" in Lexington, Mass. in 1976. This was well
before your Reagan Administration.

The original present "internet" was ARPAnet  (on which I was user #300 in
1971). This was financed before it really existed by ARPA when that
"Agency" was more-or-less a slush fund passed around at random in the
Pentagon. It continued as DARPAnet after they added that "D," for defence,
to pretend compliance with the Mansfield Amendment. I worked on this on
Congressional staff in 1969-71 and at MIT in '72. The D was tacked on in
December '71 or January '72, I forget, but had been in the works ever since
Mansfied, as Senator, had tried to prevent military money from corrupting
civilian research. Unfortunately, civilian researchers cried piteously that
they wanted to be corrupted. By then, Mansfied was ambassador to Japan....

When the scalability of the internetted nets, DARPAnet, began to seem
limited, -- all those !!! "bangs," -- its growth was smoothed by the
development of the present TCP/IP, credited to Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf. When
Cerf later went to work for MCI, a hapless little phone company, their PR
department tub-thumped that he was "the" founder of "the" Internet. Many
people seem to have believed this inanity. More recently this has been
toned down to "a" founder of the Internet. In fact packet-switching, the
key invention, was largely the work of Lenny Kleinrock, under whom Cerf
studied as a university student. Their much later contribution to TCP/IP
has certainly been useful.

On Fri, 11 Mar 2022 at 13:07, willi uebelherr via InternetPolicy <
[email-masked]> wrote:

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---

From: David Lloyd-Jones <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2022 05:16:52 -0400

Correction: "  in his utterly false "retirement" in Lexington, Mass. in
1976."
Nope, typo: 1966.

---

From: vinton cerf <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2022 07:59:01 -0400

1. Arpanet was never called "Darpanet"
2. I don't think we ever "numbered" users since getting on the Arpanet was
mostly by having an account on a time-sharing computer at a university (or
research lab) that had an ARPA contract.
3. "bangs" were at email level, not Arpanet (or Internet) level of routing.
The "bang" email addresses aided routing through application level
gateways.
4. Bob Kahn, Dave Walden, Frank Heart and many others at BBN did the
Arpanet IMP design. The Arpanet Host-Host NCP effort was led by Steve
Crocker (Jon Postel and I and others helped) and stabilized enough to
support email in 1971 and a public demonstration in October 1972. The
Internet work started the next year in 1973. Since Internet was conceived
as a network of networks, you needed more than one network to make an
Internet. There were three to begin with: Arpanet, Packet Radio Net and
Packet Satellite Net, all funded by ARPA.

---

From: Steve Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2022 08:59:57 -0400

Adding to Vint's comments:

I was at (D)ARPA from mid 1971 to mid 1974.  Bob Kahn arrived in late
1972.  Vint came a few years after I left.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was created in 1958 in
response to the launch of Sputnik.  It was placed within the Defense
Department's Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD).  I believe OSD was
about 2,000 people.  ARPA was approximately 150 people.  It was
purposefully structured as an agile operation, authorized to define its own
projects and get them moving quickly.  Its authority and operation were
overseen by both DoD management and the relevant Congressional committees
and subcommittees.  "Slush fund" is a pejorative term that mischaracterizes
the organization.

In 1972, following a decision to reduce the size of OSD, ARPA was moved out
of OSD and became a Defense agency.  This put it in the same status as the
other Defense agencies, e.g., Defense Mapping Agency (DMA), Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA), Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA), et al.  In the
process, "ARPA" acquired the "D" and became DARPA.  There was no
appreciable change in the mission, structure or operation of the agency.
On paper, the director of DARPA now reported directly to the Secretary of
Defense instead of the Defense Director for Research and Engineering
(DDR&E).  In practice, the reporting lines remained the same.  I don't
believe the transition had anything to do with the Mansfield amendment.
(D)ARPA was unabashedly doing work on a wide range of military technologies
both before and after the transition.  Each internal funding  memo included
a section describing the relevance of the effort being funded to the
overall DoD mission.  I wrote my share of these, as did every program
manager.  See the next paragraphs for a key point related to this.

Internally, (D)ARPA is divided into a handful of Offices.  Each Office
focuses on specific technologies.  Offices are created, folded down, and
renamed at various times.  In the beginning, ARPA focused on the space
program.  In 1962, the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) was
formed to focus on advanced computer science technology.  JCR Licklider was
the first director.  The Office funded research across a broad spectrum of
computer science topics ranging from time-sharing systems, graphics,
multiprocessor architectures, and artificial intelligence.  Many of these
ideas had already been articulated and pursued in a few labs around the
country.  IPTO was able to put considerably more money into these areas.

The Offices were how the agency was structured from a personnel point of
view.  From a budget point of view, the agency was structured in terms of
"programs."  Each program had a budget and an objective.  These were
documented and reported to DoD management and Congress each year.

Most of the Offices had programs that were intended to yield results within
a few years.  However, IPTO, the Materials Science Office, and the
Behavioral Sciences Office funded research with a *much* longer time
horizon.  These were considered "basic research" offices, in contrast to
the other "development" Offices.  The aggregate funding for basic research
was just a small fraction of the overall (D)ARPA budget, which meant that
most of (D)ARPA's funding was producing visible results fairly regularly.
The budgets and progress of the basic research Offices were still reviewed
annually, but the expectations were adjusted.

The terms "basic research" and "development" correspond to the budget
designations "6.1" and "6.2."  Line 6 in McNamara's famous reorganization
of the Defense budget was Research, Development, Test and Engineering
(RDT&E), with designations of 6.1 through 6.4.  The funding levels were
significantly different, i.e. 6.1 << 6.2 << 6.3 << 6.4.  (D)ARPA's funding
was limited to just 6.1 and 6.2 programs.

In terms of its budget, IPTO evolved and became a hybrid Office with two
programs, one with 6.1 funding and one with 6.2 funding.  The artificial
intelligence work was part of the 6.1 budget.  The big system developments,
e.g., Illiac IV and Multics, were part of the 6.2 budget.

As noted, the idea of a network had been written about and was definitely
part of the vision.  There were a handful of small efforts to connect two
or three computers.  The Arpanet was conceived and initiated in 1965-66.
After a couple of years of planning, the Request for Quotation for the IMPs
was released in 1968.  Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) in Cambridge, MA was
selected, and work began in 1969.  The first IMP was delivered to UCLA at
the beginning of September that year.

When the Arpanet was up and running, IPTO began to look at packet radio and
packet satellite networking.  With strong support from the director of the
agency, Steve Lukasik, a third budget line item was created, also within
the overall 6.2 budget, that focused on communications.

============================

I believe the use of the exclamation point (!), informally called "bang,"
was part of the UUNET routing scheme, not the Arpanet routing or email
addressing.

Steve

On Tue, Mar 15, 2022 at 7:59 AM vinton cerf via InternetPolicy <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> 3. "bangs" were at email level, not Arpanet (or Internet) level of
> routing. The "bang" email addresses aided routing through application level
> gateways.

---

From: David Lloyd-Jones <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2022 09:27:57 -0400

Steve,

A fine piece, though you take the Official Truths a little too seriously.

"Structured as an agile operation," may be said to be a sweet and nice way
of saying "slush fund."  "Overseen by both DoD management and the relevant
Congressional committees and subcommittees" is a fine joke for the morning.
In those days Federal budgets tended to be published about half way through
the fiscal year, but I believe Junior Bush achieved the astonishing trick
of publishing a budget after the entire year was over. Even today, with
Congressional staffs quadruple what they were back then, DARPA is so small
that I doubt it gets more than a couple of staffers' mornings of serious
consideration in a year.

The addition of the D was entirely cosmetic, purely for the purpose of
paying lip-service to the Mansfield Amendment. The name had nothing to do
with the evolution of the agency itself. In 1962 it was just loose money
contributed by whichever Pentagon office could be made to cough it up
toward the end of the year. By ten years later, when then-Senator Mansfied
was concerned about the possible corrupting influence of military money, it
had a relatively fixed name, offices, and staff. The solidification has
continued, as you detail.

FWIW, at the time when "the Net" had seven nodes two of them were in the
UK, the Defence Establishment, in London, and the fine artificial
intelligence group up in Edinborough. Both ARPAnet and DARPAnet were rare.

On Tue, 15 Mar 2022 at 09:00, Steve Crocker <[email-masked]> wrote:

> In 1972, following a decision to reduce the size of OSD, ARPA was moved
> out of OSD and became a Defense agency.  This put it in the same status as
> the other Defense agencies, e.g., Defense Mapping Agency (DMA), Defense
> Most of the Offices had programs that were intended to yield results
> within a few years.  However, IPTO, the Materials Science Office, and the
> When the Arpanet was up and running, IPTO began to look at packet radio
> and packet satellite networking.  With strong support from the director of
> the agency, Steve Lukasik, a third budget line item was created, also
> within the overall 6.2 budget, that focused on communications.
>
>> 2. I don't think we ever "numbered" users since getting on the Arpanet
>> was mostly by having an account on a time-sharing computer at a university
>> (or research lab) that had an ARPA contract.
>>> The original present "internet" was ARPAnet  (on which I was user #300
>>> in 1971). This was financed before it really existed by ARPA when that

---

From: Steve Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2022 09:42:05 -0400

David,

Thanks for the immediate response.

I don't believe the Mansfield amendment was specific to DARPA.  DARPA was
and always has been a very small part of the overall Department of Defense
budget.

Re "the Net," I'm not sure which network you're referring to.  The first
several nodes of the Arpanet were all in the U.S.  Many, many lists and
maps have been published documenting the growth of the Arpanet.  Given your
reference to bangs, perhaps the net you're referring to was the UUNET,
which used uucp to copy messages from one Unix machine to the next.  I'm
less familiar with the details of its growth.

Steve

On Tue, Mar 15, 2022 at 9:28 AM David Lloyd-Jones <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> "Structured as an agile operation," may be said to be a sweet and nice
> way of saying "slush fund."  "Overseen by both DoD management and the
> relevant Congressional committees and subcommittees" is a fine joke for the
> morning. In those days Federal budgets tended to be published about half
> way through the fiscal year, but I believe Junior Bush achieved the
> astonishing trick of publishing a budget after the entire year was over.
> Even today, with Congressional staffs quadruple what they were back then,
> DARPA is so small that I doubt it gets more than a couple of staffers'
> mornings of serious consideration in a year.
>

---

From: David Lloyd-Jones <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2022 09:52:24 -0400

Steve,

You're quite right: the Mansfield Amendment was about *all* military money
being separated from all civilian research and ARPA as a whole, not just
the computer part, was a small part of that. Nevertheless it scared the
bejeezus out of the universities and they ran around in circles and
panicked a lot. The simple addition of the D during the winter of '71~72
seemed to solve things -- but Mansfield no longer being in the Senate may
have been what mattered.

Best,
-dlj.

On Tue, 15 Mar 2022 at 09:42, Steve Crocker <[email-masked]> wrote:

>>> As noted, the idea of a network had been written about and was
>>> definitely part of the vision.  There were a handful of small efforts to
>>> connect two or three computers.  The Arpanet was conceived and initiated in
>>> 1965-66.  After a couple of years of planning, the Request for Quotation
>>> for the IMPs was released in 1968.  Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) in
>>> Cambridge, MA was selected, and work began in 1969.  The first IMP was
>>> delivered to UCLA at the beginning of September that year.
>>>
>>> I believe the use of the exclamation point (!), informally called
>>> "bang," was part of the UUNET routing scheme, not the Arpanet routing or
>>> email addressing.
>>>
>>> Steve
>>>
>>>

---

From: vinton cerf <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2022 12:50:46 -0400

"UUCP routing" versus "UUNET routing"? UUNET did indeed offer UUCP as its
primary service but UUCP was implemented widely on all (?) UNIX-based
systems and likely on non-UNIX systems for interoperability.

v

---

From: Steve Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2022 12:54:42 -0400

My nomenclature re uu* is fuzzy.  I know there was a command to copy a file from one Unix machine to another.  I’m not clear on whether this included routing to other machines or whether that was a higher level protocol.

Steve

Sent from my iPhone

> On Mar 15, 2022, at 12:50 PM, vinton cerf <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> 
> "UUCP routing" versus "UUNET routing"? UUNET did indeed offer UUCP as its primary service but UUCP was implemented widely on all (?) UNIX-based systems and likely on non-UNIX systems for interoperability.
> 
> v
> 
> 
>> I was at (D)ARPA from mid 1971 to mid 1974.  Bob Kahn arrived in late 1972.  Vint came a few years after I left.
>> 
>> The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was created in 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnik.  It was placed within the Defense Department's Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD).  I believe OSD was about 2,000 people.  ARPA was approximately 150 people.  It was purposefully structured as an agile operation, authorized to define its own projects and get them moving quickly.  Its authority and operation were overseen by both DoD management and the relevant Congressional committees and subcommittees.  "Slush fund" is a pejorative term that mischaracterizes the organization.
>> 
>> In 1972, following a decision to reduce the size of OSD, ARPA was moved out of OSD and became a Defense agency.  This put it in the same status as the other Defense agencies, e.g., Defense Mapping Agency (DMA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA), et al.  In the process, "ARPA" acquired the "D" and became DARPA.  There was no appreciable change in the mission, structure or operation of the agency.  On paper, the director of DARPA now reported directly to the Secretary of Defense instead of the Defense Director for Research and Engineering (DDR&E).  In practice, the reporting lines remained the same.  I don't believe the transition had anything to do with the Mansfield amendment.  (D)ARPA was unabashedly doing work on a wide range of military technologies both before and after the transition.  Each internal funding  memo included a section describing the relevance of the effort being funded to the overall DoD mission.  I wrote my share of these, as did every program manager.  See the next paragraphs for a key point related to this.
>> 
>> Internally, (D)ARPA is divided into a handful of Offices.  Each Office focuses on specific technologies.  Offices are created, folded down, and renamed at various times.  In the beginning, ARPA focused on the space program.  In 1962, the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) was formed to focus on advanced computer science technology.  JCR Licklider was the first director.  The Office funded research across a broad spectrum of computer science topics ranging from time-sharing systems, graphics, multiprocessor architectures, and artificial intelligence.  Many of these ideas had already been articulated and pursued in a few labs around the country.  IPTO was able to put considerably more money into these areas.
>> 
>> The Offices were how the agency was structured from a personnel point of view.  From a budget point of view, the agency was structured in terms of "programs."  Each program had a budget and an objective.  These were documented and reported to DoD management and Congress each year.
>> 
>> Most of the Offices had programs that were intended to yield results within a few years.  However, IPTO, the Materials Science Office, and the Behavioral Sciences Office funded research with a *much* longer time horizon.  These were considered "basic research" offices, in contrast to the other "development" Offices.  The aggregate funding for basic research was just a small fraction of the overall (D)ARPA budget, which meant that most of (D)ARPA's funding was producing visible results fairly regularly.  The budgets and progress of the basic research Offices were still reviewed annually, but the expectations were adjusted.
>> 
>> The terms "basic research" and "development" correspond to the budget designations "6.1" and "6.2."  Line 6 in McNamara's famous reorganization of the Defense budget was Research, Development, Test and Engineering (RDT&E), with designations of 6.1 through 6.4.  The funding levels were significantly different, i.e. 6.1 << 6.2 << 6.3 << 6.4.  (D)ARPA's funding was limited to just 6.1 and 6.2 programs.
>> 
>> In terms of its budget, IPTO evolved and became a hybrid Office with two programs, one with 6.1 funding and one with 6.2 funding.  The artificial intelligence work was part of the 6.1 budget.  The big system developments, e.g., Illiac IV and Multics, were part of the 6.2 budget.
>> 
>> As noted, the idea of a network had been written about and was definitely part of the vision.  There were a handful of small efforts to connect two or three computers.  The Arpanet was conceived and initiated in 1965-66.  After a couple of years of planning, the Request for Quotation for the IMPs was released in 1968.  Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) in Cambridge, MA was selected, and work began in 1969.  The first IMP was delivered to UCLA at the beginning of September that year.
>> 
>> When the Arpanet was up and running, IPTO began to look at packet radio and packet satellite networking.  With strong support from the director of the agency, Steve Lukasik, a third budget line item was created, also within the overall 6.2 budget, that focused on communications.
>> 
>> I believe the use of the exclamation point (!), informally called "bang," was part of the UUNET routing scheme, not the Arpanet routing or email addressing.
>> 
>> Steve
>> 
>> 
>>> On Tue, Mar 15, 2022 at 7:59 AM vinton cerf via InternetPolicy <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>> 2. I don't think we ever "numbered" users since getting on the Arpanet was mostly by having an account on a time-sharing computer at a university (or research lab) that had an ARPA contract. 
>>> 3. "bangs" were at email level, not Arpanet (or Internet) level of routing. The "bang" email addresses aided routing through application level gateways. 
>>> 4. Bob Kahn, Dave Walden, Frank Heart and many others at BBN did the Arpanet IMP design. The Arpanet Host-Host NCP effort was led by Steve Crocker (Jon Postel and I and others helped) and stabilized enough to support email in 1971 and a public demonstration in October 1972. The Internet work started the next year in 1973. Since Internet was conceived as a network of networks, you needed more than one network to make an Internet. There were three to begin with: Arpanet, Packet Radio Net and Packet Satellite Net, all funded by ARPA.
>>> 
>>>> On Tue, Mar 15, 2022 at 4:50 AM David Lloyd-Jones via InternetPolicy <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>>> Willi,
>>>> 
>>>> You have shown us that you are full of good sentiments. Quite a lot of them. Very good ones. I assume that you know something about the start and development of the Internet but no such knowledge has found its way into your long post.
>>>> .
>>>> First proposed by Bacon in the fifteenth century or so, the 'Net was a solid policy proposal made by Vannevar Bush in 1945. It was made possible by the invention of packet-switching in the mid-1960 to 70s. Johnny Foster, JFK's science advisor in 1961, was the first person I know of to have done solid financing of the effort.  Bush was working on wide-scale computer networking, along with many other things, when I met him in his utterly false "retirement" in Lexington, Mass. in 1976. This was well before your Reagan Administration. 
>>>> 
>>>> The original present "internet" was ARPAnet  (on which I was user #300 in 1971). This was financed before it really existed by ARPA when that "Agency" was more-or-less a slush fund passed around at random in the Pentagon. It continued as DARPAnet after they added that "D," for defence, to pretend compliance with the Mansfield Amendment. I worked on this on Congressional staff in 1969-71 and at MIT in '72. The D was tacked on in December '71 or January '72, I forget, but had been in the works ever since Mansfied, as Senator, had tried to prevent military money from corrupting civilian research. Unfortunately, civilian researchers cried piteously that they wanted to be corrupted. By then, Mansfied was ambassador to Japan.... 
>>>> 
>>>> When the scalability of the internetted nets, DARPAnet, began to seem limited, -- all those !!! "bangs," -- its growth was smoothed by the development of the present TCP/IP, credited to Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf. When Cerf later went to work for MCI, a hapless little phone company, their PR department tub-thumped that he was "the" founder of "the" Internet. Many people seem to have believed this inanity. More recently this has been toned down to "a" founder of the Internet. In fact packet-switching, the key invention, was largely the work of Lenny Kleinrock, under whom Cerf studied as a university student. Their much later contribution to TCP/IP has certainly been useful. 
>>>> 
>>>>> On Fri, 11 Mar 2022 at 13:07, willi uebelherr via InternetPolicy <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> View the Internet Society Code of Conduct: https://www.internetsociety.org/become-a-member/code-of-conduct/
>>>> View the Internet Society Code of Conduct: https://www.internetsociety.org/become-a-member/code-of-conduct/
>>> View the Internet Society Code of Conduct: https://www.internetsociety.org/become-a-member/code-of-conduct/

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2022 11:04:34 -0700

(when searching on 'uucp' be sure to include 'unix', lest you end up 
with pointers to quite a different topic...)

As I recall, uucp was indeed universal, quite early in the life of unix.

Routing was manual, source routing.  Hence an 'address' specified each 
node to be transited, producing potentially many exclamation marks in 
the address/route.  And yes indeed, this was at the email level, rather 
than at any lower layers.

Eventually some major switching node emerged, permitting referencing 
them as an anchor, without regard to the path to get to the major 
switch.  As I recall, there were separate apps that computed uucp 
network maps.  But I don't recall how those got used.

FWIW, for CSNet, we used the percent symbol, to indicate one hop, beyond 
the arpanet.  Hence user%csnet-host@csnet-relay.  So, arguably, a hybrid 
of global and relative addressing.

The hybrid -- and the resulting email address syntax -- could get 
complicated -- and error-rone -- when additional email networks were 
part of the transit, such as Bitnet.

Craig Patridge notes significant discussions needed, that produced the 
profound benefit of finally getting agreement among operators of these 
various, independent email services, to use the DNS MX record for routing.

d/

On 3/15/2022 9:54 AM, Steve Crocker wrote:
> My nomenclature re uu* is fuzzy.  I know there was a command to copy a 
> file from one Unix machine to another.  I’m not clear on whether this 
> included routing to other machines or whether that was a higher level 
> protocol.
> 
> Steve
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
>> "UUCP routing" versus "UUNET routing"? UUNET did indeed offer UUCP as 
>> its primary service but UUCP was implemented widely on all (?) 
>> UNIX-based systems and likely on non-UNIX systems for interoperability.

---

From: Tim Bray <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2022 11:12:20 -0700

I once spent an unhappy six months very early in my career working in the
IT shop of a fifth-rate telephone company's R&D center, where we had both
Unix and VMS. The VMS C compiler came out and I eventually got UUCP working
on VMS, which I cleverly called UVCP.  I could never make it 100% reliable,
there was something in the VMS terminal driver that randomly lost
characters and I could never get the recovery code to work right. But a
couple tries and your data would eventually go through.  That wasn't the
bad part; the bad part was when our pointy-haired power-crazed IT Director
decided we should go into the software business and started selling it.
Which meant I had to take support calls from the customers who didn't think
that it was OK that it worked except when it didn't. In a rare exhibition
of corporate justice, the IT Director was summarily fired one day.

---

From: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2022 21:25:44 -0700

(List admin hat off)

Others have commented on various parts, but to address one not yet addressed:

> On Mar 15, 2022, at 1:49 AM, David Lloyd-Jones <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Willi,
> ...
> First proposed by Bacon in the fifteenth century or so,

IMO, Chappe should get most of the credit. I found a vague reference to Bacon and the idea, but nothing specific (if you can point us to a citation, it’d be sincerely appreciated).

> the 'Net was a solid policy proposal made by Vannevar Bush in 1945.

In “As we may think,”, he proposed something more akin to the Web (i.e., a cross-linked database). In fact, he said "It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works.” - which is the opposite of “information at a distance” that is the core concept of networking. All the examples are of people creating their own encyclopedia, which misses the collaborative nature of the net.

> It was made possible by the invention of packet-switching in the mid-1960 to 70s.
> …
>  In fact packet-switching, the key invention, was largely the work of

Paul Baran and Donald Davies.

> Lenny Kleinrock, under whom Cerf studied as a university student.

, who (Len) made significant and key contributions to queuing theory, laying the theoretic foundations for what became packet switching, and which also had (and continues to have) many other uses at the time. Also important foundational work on the ARPAnet. 

But I haven’t seen him credited with *inventing* packet switching, though.

It’s also worth noting that Postel was a student at UCLA at the same time, though his PhD advisor was Dave Farber, who was at UC Irvine at the time. The two found a loophole that a PhD advisor in the UC system had to come from somewhere in the UC system, but not necessarily at the same school as the student.

Corrections from the gallery welcome, of course. 

Joe

---

From: Hannes Tschofenig <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2022 07:49:24 +0000

A small note:

> I would like to propose the following: Let's make a strict separation of transport and application.

> The Internet is only a transport system for digital data in packet form and has only one task: To make sure that the packet sent by the sender arrives exactly the same at the receiver. Thus the error handling is implicit part of the transport system.

Very few people use the term "Internet" to only refer to the "Internet Protocol". Instead, the Internet is usually used to refer to the whole system, including the applications, TCP/UDP, TLS, and all the other good stuff.

If you narrow your definition of the "Internet" down to "IP" then your definition of the task above is wrong. IP does not provide error handling so that the packets sent by the sender arrive exactly in the same manner at the receiver. This is a function provided by layers above IP.

Ciao
Hannes

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Thank you.

---

From: willi uebelherr <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2022 23:19:00 -0300

Dear friends,

I am very grateful to everyone for their contributions to this topic and 
the sub-topics that follow. I have attached the last email from Toerless 
Eckert from the ietf discussion list. This discussion is thematically 
about the ISOC policy list, ietf and irtf discussion lists. I have 
omitted IGF (Internet Governance).

I would like to propose the following: Let's make a strict separation of 
transport and application.

The Internet is only a transport system for digital data in packet form 
and has only one task: To make sure that the packet sent by the sender 
arrives exactly the same at the receiver. Thus the error handling is 
implicit part of the transport system.

An application abstracts from the concrete ways and distances of the 
transport. The only variable is the time. We can thus completely 
simulate any application acting on and with distributed systems in local 
and global space on a single system.

Briefly to the history. We must always take as a basis that both our 
thinking and our real possibilities change historically dialectically. I 
myself come from the technical computer science for mechanical 
engineering and process technology and therefore I know how much the 
conditions themselves have changed in the course of time.

Andrew Sullivan gave us the perspective: "the Internet is for everyone". 
The question for me is, can a telecommunication in the form of an 
Internet ever do justice to this task if it is dominated by private and 
state interests? And if centralization is the dominant method for doing so?

My own answer to this question is a resounding no.

And the alternative? I got an answer with a question in the environment 
of IETF, which did not appear on the list:
"I would like to hear your ideas on how we can make the internet a 
network of networks for the people, by the people, with no companies or 
governments controlling how the people may or may not use it."

I remember our first discussion on this question in 2014 on Netmundial's 
(Brasil) 1net.org list and our second discussion in 2016 on the global 
ISOC Internet Policy list. My perception was that there was no general 
interest. Is this because all actors for Internet organization are 
existentially dependent on this system structure? I don't know, but I 
suspect so, because I can't find any other explanation for it.

To find reasonable and proven construction principles for an InterNet, 
we do not have to search long:
a) the organic nature. Every plant or mushroom is an autonomous system 
and from the connection of these systems with the systems around the 
stable biotopes arise.
b) the communities with their roads and paths as connections, the 
transport routes for material transport systems. The navigation and 
orientation is based on real geographical information.

Now I ask myself, why such nonsense with virtual address spaces is 
organized for the inmaterial transport systems, although clearly every 
node in the system has a unique geographical position? And why are 
transfer capacities artificially reduced? And why is a large part of the 
transfer effort generated only because centralized nodes far outside are 
supposed to perform the local functionalities?

All this makes no sense, if we apply the real requirements as the real 
criteria and do not deliver ourselves to some useless head births.

 From this follows:
1) each community organizes its own local and autonomous network with 
the client and server functionalities and the connections of the houses. 
The address definitions and the navigation remain a local matter. 
Servers are always simple file systems that ensure constant operation. 
The data processing takes place on the clients.
2) these local networks connect to their neighboring local networks and 
so the lowest level of an Internet is created.
3) for large distances, the number of nodes to be traversed becomes 
relevant. Therefore, the same occurs with the regional centers.
4) outside the local networks, in the global space, the address of the 
local network is derived from the geographical position in the WCS84 
(World Coordinate System 1984). Thus, each node as a router has 
immediately from its own position and the destination position the 
information of direction and distance of the packet and can select the 
output.
5) there are 3 types of transfer with ascending priority: asynchronous, 
synchronous and emergency.

About the DNS system:
For this I suggest that there are only ccTLDs (country/region coded Top 
Level Domain). Each DNS service can keep these few addresses constantly 
available. How deep the decentralization is then driven in the region is 
decided there and can go down to the local network.
Each small island or a region on a large island thus maintains its own 
DNS root server, which knows its own structure and the resulting 
requirements. Back to the requestor it can go directly afterwards, if no 
regional cashes are planned on the way.

To the global network for free technology:
The most important tool to create such an internet is a global network 
for free technology, which of course also deals with telecommunication. 
It rests on 2 principles:
a) think globally, act locally.
This is simple, because the laws of nature are global and universal, and 
only they and their application are at stake.
b) Knowledge is always the heritage of mankind
This is also simple because everything that enables us to contribute is 
inherited from others and from our ancestors.

With this I will close for now and greet all readers, willi
Asuncion, Paraguay

Original in german --------------------------------------------------

Liebe freunde,

ich bin allen sehr dankbar fuer ihre Beitraege zu diesem Thema und den 
darauf folgenden Subthemen. Ich habe die letzte email von Toerless 
Eckert von der ietf-discussions-liste mit angehaengt. Bei dieser 
Diskussion geht es thematisch um die ISOC policy liste, ietf und irtf 
discussion listen. IGF (Internet Governance) habe ich weggelassen.

Ich moechte folgendes vorschlagen: Lasst uns eine strikte Trennung von 
Transport und Anwendung machen.

Das Internet ist nur ein Transportsystem fuer digitale Daten in 
Paketform und hat nur eine Aufgabe: Dafuer zu sorgen, dass das Paket, 
das der Sender absendet, genau so beim Empfaenger ankommt. Damit ist die 
Fehlerbehandlung impliziter Teil des Transportsystems.

Eine Anwendung abstrahiert von den konkreten Wegen und Distanzen des 
Transports. Die einzige veraenderliche Groesse dabei ist die Zeit. Wir 
koennen so jede beliebige Anwendung, die auf und mit verteilten Systemen 
im lokalen und globalen Raum agiert, auf einem einzelnen System komplett 
simulieren.

Noch kurz zur Geschichte. Wir muessen immer zugrunde legen, dass sich 
sowohl unser Denken wie auch unsere realen Moeglichkeiten historisch 
dialektisch veraendern. Ich selbst komme aus der technischen Informatik 
fuer Maschinenbau und Prozesstechnologie und weiss daher, wie sehr sich 
im Laufe der Zeit die Bedinguungen selbst veraendert haben.

Andrew Sullivan hat uns doch die Perspektive genannt: "the Internet is 
for everyone". Die Frage fuer mich ist, kann eine Telekommunikation in 
Form eines Internets jemals dieser Aufgabe gerecht werden, wenn sie von 
privaten und staatlichen Interessen dominiert wird? Und wenn die 
Zentralisation die dominante Methode dafuer ist?

Ich selbst beantworte diese Frage mit einem klaren Nein.

Und die Alternative? Ich bekam eine Antwort mit einer Frage im Umfeld 
von IETF, die nicht auf der Liste erschien:
"I would like to hear your ideas on how we can make the internet a 
network of networks for the people, by the people, with no companies or 
governments controlling how the people may or may not use it."

Ich erinnere mich an unsere erste Diskussion zu dieser Frage 2014 in der 
Liste 1net.org von Netmundial (Brasil) und an unsere zweite Diskussion 
2016 in der globalen ISOC Internet Policy Liste. Meine Wahrnehmung war, 
dass kein allgemeines Interesse bestand. Liegt dies daran, dass alle 
Akteure fuer die Internet-Organisation existenziell von dieser 
Systemstruktur abhaengig sind? Ich weiss es nicht, vermute es jedoch, 
weil ich sonst keine Erklaerung dafuer finde.

Um vernueftige und bewaehrte Konstruktionsprinzipien fuer ein InterNet 
zu finden, muessen wir nicht lange suchen:
a) die organische Natur. Jede Planze oder Pilz ist ein autonomes System 
und aus der Verbindung dieser Systeme mit den Systemen umher entstehen 
die stabilen Biotope.
b) die Gemeinden mit ihren Strassen und Wege als Verbindungen, den 
Transporttrassen fuer materielle Transportsysteme. Die Navigation und 
Orientierung beruht auf realen geografischen informationen.

Jetzt frage ich mich, warum bei den inmateriellen Transportsystemen ein 
solcher Unsinn mit virtuellen Adressraeumen organisiert wird, obwohl 
doch eindeutig jeder Knoten im System eine eindeutige geografische 
Position hat? Und warum werden Transferkapazitaeten kuenstlich 
reduziert? Und warum wird ein Grossteil des transferaufwands nur deshalb 
erzeugt, weil zentralisierte Knotenpunkte weit ausserhalb auch die 
lokalen Funktionalitaeten leisten sollen?

Das macht doch alles keinen Sinn, wenn wir die realen Anforderungen als 
die wirklichen Kriterien anwenden und uns nicht irgendwelchen nutzlosen 
Kopfgeburten ausliefern.

Daraus Folgt:
1) jede Gemeinde organisiert ihr eigenes lokales und autonomes Netzwerk 
mit den Client- und Server-Funktionalitaeten und den Verbindungen der 
Haeuser. Die Adressdefinitonen und die Navigation bleibt eine lokale 
Angelegenheit. Server sind immer nur einfache Filesysteme, die einen 
konstanten Betrieb sicherstellen. Die Datenverarbeitung findet auf den 
Clients statt.
2) diese lokalen Netzwerke verbinden sich mit ihren benachbarten lokalen 
Netzwerken und so entsteht die unterste Ebene eines Internets.
3) fuer grosse Distanzen wird die Anzahl der zu durchlaufenden Knoten 
relevant. Deshalb entsteht das gleiche mit den regionalen Zentren.
4) ausserhalb der lokalen Netzwerke, im globalen Raum, wird die Adresse 
des lokalen Netzwerks aus der geografischen Position im WCS84 (World 
Coordinate System 1984) abgeleitet. Damit hat jeder Knoten als Router 
aus seiner eigenen Position und der Zielposition sofort die information 
von Richtung und Distanz des Pakets und kann den Ausgang waehlen.
5) er gibt 3 Transferarten mit aufsteigender Prioritaet: Asynchron, 
Synchron und Notruf.

Zum DNS-System:
Dazu schlage ich vor, dass nur noch ccTLDs (country/region coded Top 
Level Domain) gibt. Jeder DNS-Service kann diese wenigen Adressen stetig 
zur Verfuegung halten. Wie tief dann die Dezentralisierung in der Region 
getrieben wird, wird dort entschieden und kann bis hinunter zum lokalen 
Netzwerk gehen.
Jede kleine Insel oder eine Region auf einer grossen Insel unterhaelt 
damit seinen eigenen DNS-Root-Server, der seine eigene Struktur und die 
daraus folgenden Anforderungen kennt. Zurueck zum Requestor kann es 
danach direkt gehen, wenn keine regionalen Cashes unterwegs geplant sind.

Zum globalen Netzwerk fuer freie Technologie:
Das wichtigste Werkzeug dafuer, ein solches Internet entstehen zu 
lassen, ist ein globales Netzwerk fuer freie Technologie, das neben den 
vielen anderen Themen natuerlich auch die Telekommunikation bearbeitet. 
Es ruht auf 2 Prinzipien:
a) global denken, lokal handeln
Das ist einfach, weil die Gesetze der Natur global und universal gelten 
und nur um sie und ihre Anwendung geht es dabei.
b) Wissen ist immer Erbe der Menschheit
Auch das ist einfach, weil wir alles, was uns in die Lage versetzt, 
etwas beizutragen, von den Anderen und unseren Vorfahren haben.

Damit will ich erstmal schliessen und gruesse alle LeserInnen, willi
Asuncion, Paraguay

Am 15.03.2022 um 15:13 schrieb Toerless Eckert:
> Given how [email-masked] is a large-subscriber-set mailing list with hopefully always new members,
> a quick and hopefully useful service notice:
> 
> I think i already offered a redirect of the actual subject matter to ISOC's internet-policy mailing list,
> but given how the thread since then has been a lot of fun about interesting aspects of the Internet/Arpanets
> history and technologies, and  not really about the subject:
> 
> If you like me enjoy those discussions and insights about Internet history beyond random occurrances
> here, the best mailing list for that is probably [email-masked]
> 
> Sorry for the interruption. Please carry on.
> 
> Cheers
>      Toerless

---

From: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2022 15:02:02 -0700

Trimming this to the more appropriate list...

> On Mar 16, 2022, at 1:20 PM, willi uebelherr <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> 
> Dear Hannes,
> 
> absolut correct, we act in the past and on the level of the past. In this time, the digital information, coded in analog signals, was going over a pure analog system with relais and amplifiers and on the end you have the digital information decoded.
> 
> In general, nature does not know digital technology.

You’re both overlooking quantum effects (by very definition of the word “quantum”), as well as many other effects that are countable but not infinitely so.

E.g., a single photon is an example of digital technology - it either arrives or does not.

Electron energy levels come in finite steps as well. So does single-slit self interference (it either happens or doesn’t).

The interaction of photons and polarized filters also exhibits binary properties (each photon either passes or does not).

Nevermind the system that gives us the word “digital” - fingers. Nobody counts in half fingers.

> Data transmission will always be analog.

Except when it’s digital, yes. ;-)

> Internally in our data processing systems we work with digital interpretation of analog signals.
> 
> In analog systems, no error checking can take place that relates to digital interpretations.

Analog systems have error checking too, just not the same way.

> But today, every node in the network works with digital information. Only the connections must still be analog. And thus the error checking can take place in each segment of the transport system.
> 
> TCP/IP is no longer needed. Also, because the resources in all end nodes are sufficient to receive the packets.

TCP reorders, recovers for loss, adjusts rates to account for congestion, AND maintains endpoint state. What do you propose will replace that and why would it not be reinventing it?

> If not, the transmitter can determine the capacity of the receiver beforehand, or the receiver will reject the reception.

This assumes receiver buffers are the issue; there are plenty of others.

Joe

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2022 15:15:59 -0400

The OP gets a lot of the history wrong. But I don't think the established
history is entirely correct either. It is a history given from a particular
point of view which is not the only relevant point of view.

The view from outside was never quite the same as the view from inside. And
the US version of how the Internet was won tends to sound rather too much
like white men bringing their benevolent gifts. The implication being that
if the Internet is a gift of the US of A, it is only right and proper that
the vision of the founders determine its future in perpetuity.

My view of what happened is rather different. Basically, the Internet
succeeded because it was the only technical proposal on the table that met
the necessary conditions for becoming a global network. And the first and
most important of those was local autonomy. So local autonomy was not a
gift, it was a necessary condition for success.

If we were to explore the counterfactual in which (D)ARPA did not fund
Internet development, that might have affected the timing but
AOL/CompuServe/MSN would have still faced the same fact that an open
communication system will grow faster than closed and no government was
going to allow a foreign company to establish a monopoly of email.

We are currently engaged in what some are starting to call 'The Great
Information War'. Had Putin's crew managed to succeed in their attempted
coup on 2021/6/1, Trump would have disbanded NATO before the invasion of
Ukraine. Fascism would have returned to Europe and likely have arrived in
the US as well.

The Internet was always at the center of the Great Information War. But it
wasn't Trump's tweets that reached a national audience, it was the
willingness of the establishment media to repeat them. And not just Fox
News, but CNN, the NYT and Washington Post.

Some people are asking how the Internet can be used to win the Great
Information War. But that is to miss the real point which is how we stop
the next fighting war breaking out.

How we got to where we are is relevant only insofar as it informs our
efforts to get to where we need to be.

Telling falsehoods is a limited technique for controlling public opinion.
In the 1920s the press barons discovered that they could control public
opinion by setting the agenda, by choosing what issues were news. The civil
rights movement finally succeeded 40 years later because it was able to
successfully challenge the ability of the press to set the agenda.

Today it is not the 'centralization' of the Web that is the real issue, it
is the fact that a handful of individuals control the voting shares in the
companies that set the agenda through curation of the dominant social media
feeds. That is the power that must be challenged if the Internet is going
to fulfill its promise as a technology of freedom.

---

From: willi uebelherr <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2022 17:20:08 -0300

Dear Hannes,

absolut correct, we act in the past and on the level of the past. In 
this time, the digital information, coded in analog signals, was going 
over a pure analog system with relais and amplifiers and on the end you 
have the digital information decoded.

In general, nature does not know digital technology. Data transmission 
will always be analog. Internally in our data processing systems we work 
with digital interpretation of analog signals.

In analog systems, no error checking can take place that relates to 
digital interpretations.

But today, every node in the network works with digital information. 
Only the connections must still be analog. And thus the error checking 
can take place in each segment of the transport system.

TCP/IP is no longer needed. Also, because the resources in all end nodes 
are sufficient to receive the packets.

If not, the transmitter can determine the capacity of the receiver 
beforehand, or the receiver will reject the reception.

greetings, willi

---

From: willi uebelherr <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2022 18:04:54 -0300

Dear Phillip,

I agree with you on much, but disagree on 2 statements.

1) Your reference to Putin and Trump has nothing to do with what we call 
the Internet.

2) Your last paragraph is contradictory.
"Today it is not the 'centralization' of the Web that is the real issue, 
it is the fact that a handful of individuals control the voting shares 
in the companies that set the agenda through curation of the dominant 
social media feeds. That is the power that must be challenged if the 
Internet is going to fulfill its promise as a technology of freedom."

Centralization always rests on private interests that need 
centralization to dominate.

Earlier you write:
"And the first and most important of those was local autonomy. So local 
autonomy was not a gift, it was a necessary condition for success."

And this as part of the only proposal?

True to the laws of logic, this contradiction cannot be resolved, 
because we are moving in different areas.

The "local autonomy" was postulated only by the few and had no influence 
on the many, nor on those who determined its progress.

Today we are in a situation where we have to reconnect to this desired 
"local autonomy" if we want a peaceful and free future. The language we 
use to connect globally, here the IP protocol, is global. The 
realization of transport and processing of data is local.

with thanks and kind regards, willi
Asuncion, Paraguay

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2022 03:35:25 -0400

Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]> wrote:
    > Today it is not the 'centralization' of the Web that is the real issue,
    > Internet is going to fulfill its promise as a technology of freedom.

I agree that this is the challenge.

I wish that I could pay a fee and get access to the social media APIs and to
run my own algorithms (or hire some else's directly).  Then I realize that in
being able/willing to pay that fee, that I myself am invoking a privilege
that not everyone might have.

--
Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>, Sandelman Software Works
 -= IPv6 IoT consulting =-

---

From: David Lloyd-Jones <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2022 22:14:51 -0400

Joe,
Thanks,
-dlj.

On Wed, 16 Mar 2022 at 00:25, [email-masked] <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> IMO, Chappe should get most of the credit. I found a vague reference to
> Bacon and the idea, but nothing specific (if you can point us to a
> citation, it’d be sincerely appreciated).
>
> In “As we may think,”, he proposed something more akin to the Web (i.e., a
> cross-linked database). In fact, he said "It consists of a desk, and while
> it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of
> furniture at which he works.” - which is the opposite of “information at a
> distance” that is the core concept of networking. All the examples are of
> people creating their own encyclopedia, which misses the collaborative
> nature of the net.
>
> , who (Len) made significant and key contributions to queuing theory,
> laying the theoretic foundations for what became packet switching, and
> which also had (and continues to have) many other uses at the time. Also
> important foundational work on the ARPAnet.
>
> It’s also worth noting that Postel was a student at UCLA at the same time,
> though his PhD advisor was Dave Farber, who was at UC Irvine at the time.
> The two found a loophole that a PhD advisor in the UC system had to come
> from somewhere in the UC system, but not necessarily at the same school as
> the student.
>

---

From: willi uebelherr <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2022 14:47:40 -0400

Internet Fragmentation: An Overview
William Drake, Vinton Cerf, Wolfgang Kleinwächter
01.2016
https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_FII_Internet_Fragmentation_An_Overview_2016.pdf

Dear friends,

i am very surprised at the passion in this discussion to gather on side 
issues instead of addressing the main issues.

The statement by Andrew Sullivan from ISOC still stands:
"The Internet have to be for everyone".

And from a member of the IETF-maillist:
"Internet, from the people, for the people ..."

Already in 2016 this text was published, which I linked at the beginning 
of this email:
"Internet Fragmentation: An Overview."

On page 10 we read:
"From a technical standpoint, the original shared vision guiding the 
Internet's development was that every device on the Internet should be 
able to exchange data packets with any other device that was willing to 
receive them. ..."

And even in our 1st discussion in 2016 on the topic of the Internet on 
ISOC's global policy list, there was no relevant interest to address the 
basic problem in the construction of an Internet.

When private and governmental interests dominate, nothing can ever 
emerge that is intended to work for communities of people. It then 
remains a fragmented entity where only individual interests are to be 
realized. And there we are still.

We see today how disastrous this way is. The Russian Federation has now 
put a stop to this madness by ending the militarization and fascization 
of Eurasia.

And we see in the food supply the consequences of regions not respecting 
their sovereignty and autonomy. World trade and global economic 
constriction is part of the great nonsense that people have come up 
with. The Roman Empire also failed in this. And the US dollar empire 
will also fail.

We, as actors for a free global communication of the people of this 
planet, do not need privatization and state control mania. Etatism will 
be buried.

We need the creative development of local and regional potentials. Even 
if telecommunication is not a food, it is the prerequisite for our free 
exchange of theoretical bases and our construction ideas, in order to be 
able to produce all that we really need. And always there, where it is 
also needed.

The telecommunication in the form of an Internet is our instrument to 
overcome our fragmentation of the people into ethnic groups and 
linguistic and cultural spaces, in order to give to all people the 
possibility to be able to produce their stable material bases of life 
according to our natural conditions of existence.

You see, I refer here clearly and without compromise to the statement of 
Andrew Sullivan. Maybe some of you find my interpretation of this 
statement unpleasant or not purposeful? Then let's talk about our 
intentions and motivations that lead us to deal with questions of an 
InterNet and to talk and write about it.

When we talk about construction principles, we are not yet talking about 
the details of the components that are needed for it and how they can be 
created. Every manufacturing process rests on 3 phases:
Design, Construction and Manufacturing.

We are actually back in the design phase because we can or might 
recognize that what has been created over the last few decades is not 
fit for purpose. So it was a design failure from the beginning.

with kind regards, willi
Asuncion, Paraguay

original in german ----------------------------------------------------

Liebe freunde,

ich bin sehr erstaunt ueber die Leidenschaft in dieser Diskussion, sich 
auf Nebenschauplaetzen zu versammeln, statt sich den Hauptfragen zu widmen.

Nach wie vor steht die Aussage von Andrew Sullivan von ISOC im Raum:
"The Internet have to be for everyone".

And from a member of the IETF-maillist:
"Internet, from the people, for the people ..."

Schon 2016 wurde dieser Text veroeffentlicht, den ich am Anfang dieser 
email verlinkt habe:
"Internet Fragmentation: An Overview."

Auf Seite 10 lesen wir:
"From a technical standpoint, the original shared vision guiding the 
Internet’s development was that every device on the Internet should be 
able to exchange data packets with any other device that was willing to 
receive them. ..."

Und schon in unserer 1. Diskussion 2016 zum Thema Internet auf der 
globalen policy-liste von ISOC war kein relevantes Interesse zu 
erkennen, die Grundproblematik in der Konstruktion eines Internet 
anzusprechen.

Wenn private und staatliche Interessen dominieren, kann niemals etwas 
entstehen, das fuer die Gemeinschaften der Menschen wirken soll. Es 
bleibt dann ein fragmentiertes Gebilde, wo nur individuale Interessen 
realisiert werden sollen. Und da sind wir immer noch.

Wir sehen heute, wie katastrophal dieser Weg ist. Die russische 
Foederation hat diesem Irrsinn nun einen Stop gesetzt, indem sie die 
Militarisierung und Faschisierung von Eurasien beendet.

Und wir sehen in der Nahrungsmittelversorgung die Konsequenzen, wenn die 
Regionen nicht auf ihre Souveraenitaet und Autonomie achten. Welthandel 
und globale oekonomische Verschraenkung ist Teil des grossen Bloedsinns, 
den sich die Menschen ausgedacht haben. Auch das roemische Imperium ist 
daran gescheitert. Und das US-Dollar-Imperium wird auch daran scheitern.

Wir, als Akteure fuer eine freie globale Kommunikation der Menschen 
dieses Planeten brauchen keine Privatisierung und staatlichen 
Kontrollwahn. Der Etatismus wird begraben.

Wir brauchen die kreative Entfaltung der lokalen und regionalen 
Potentiale. Auch wenn die Telekommunikation kein Lebensmittel ist, so 
ist sie doch die Vorraussetzung fuer unseren freien Austausch der 
theoretischen Grundlagen und unserer Konstruktionsideen, um all jenes 
herstellen zu koennen, was wir wirklich brauchen. Und immer dort, wo es 
auch gebraucht wird.

Die Telekommunikation in Form eines Internet ist unser Instrument, um 
unsere Fragmentisierung der Menschen in Ethnien und spachliche und 
kulturelle Raeume zu ueberwinden, um allen Menschen die Moeglichkeit zu 
geben, ihre stabilen materiellen Lebensgrundlagen gemaess unserer 
natuerlichen Existenzbedingungen selbst herstellen zu koennen.

Ihr seht, ich beziehe mich hier eindeutig und ohne Kompromisse auf die 
Aussage von Andrew Sullivan. Vielleicht ist manchem von euch meine 
Interpretation dieser Aussage unangenehm oder nicht zielfuehrend? Dann 
lasst uns ueber unsere Intentionen und Motivationen sprechen, die uns 
veranlassen, uns mit fragen eines InterNet zu beschaeftigen und drueber 
zu sprechen und zu schreiben.

Wenn wir ueber Konstruktionsprinzipien sprechen, dann geht es noch nicht 
um die Details der Komponenten, die dafuer gebraucht werden und wie sie 
entstehen koennen. Jeder Herstellungsprozess ruht auf 3 Phasen:
Design/Entwurf, Konstruktion und Herstellung.

Wir befinden uns eigentlich wieder in der Entwurfsphase, weil wir 
erkennen koennen oder koennten, dass das, was die letzten Jahrzehnte 
entstanden ist, nicht tauglich ist. Es war also von Anfang an ein 
Entwurfsfehler.

mit lieben Gruessen, willi
Asuncion, Paraguay

---

From: Joly MacFie <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2022 04:50:21 -0400

In terms of 'elevation', I think Abdul has just raised the bar on how to be
added to as many killfiles as possible at one stroke :)

Joly

> *Dear sir/Madam!*
>
> I offer my respect for you and after giving greetings and best wishes
>
> Please receive these attachments
>
> Kind regards.
> ABDUL HAKIM "FARAHMAND"
> I have work experience above four years of  Monitoring and Elevation
> Officer
> <snip>
>

-- 
--------------------------------------
Joly MacFie  +12185659365
--------------------------------------
-

---

From: Axel Abad <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2022 12:29:30 +0000

I.M.H.O. : This is a fallacy from the beggining. Maybe was a nice idealism.. very altruistic and selfless.

But the true is there for everyone to see.

Why  should we think that Internet must be of and for everybody?
Is that more important than the Human Health? or the Food? (not for free, not for everyone)

By the moment, the only thing that we can consume freely  is the Air... Al the other "basic" needs are rated and have a cost..
Is sad, but is true.

Access to technology will be always reserved for some portion of the human kind. There are lots of people who don´t have access to food.. or even water... They are not concerned about Internet, for sure... But there are a lot of others who didn´t have access to basic tools, like a hammer or a spade...

So, the "formula" is very simple: If you have enough resources to live in the current culture without worries about food and roof needs (and other basics), then "you are in" (if you want invest on that).

Then, access to technology is costly. If you can have this access, then someone is receiving something in exchange.
And there is when the Internet stops be of all and for all. And there is when the "control" begins.
No matter if it is on a Governement hands, or a Private entity.

Until the entire Human race enter on the next Kardashov civilization age (type II) we will continue to be "energy provider" dependent, and that´s include all related technologies involved with electrical energy (Telecomm, Internet, etc.)

To have Internet free for all, we need to have Energy free for all first.

That´s is my comment about. Sorry if it is not "nice" or "kindly".

Axel Abad.-

________________________________
De: InternetPolicy <[email-masked]> en nombre de willi uebelherr via InternetPolicy <[email-masked]>
Enviado: lunes, 28 de marzo de 2022 15:47
Para: ISOC Internet Policy <[email-masked]>
Cc: IRTF discuss <[email-masked]>; IETF discussion <[email-masked]>; IGF governance <[email-masked]>
Asunto: Re: [Internet Policy] Why the World Must Resist Calls to Undermine the Internet

Dear friends,

On page 10 we read:

with kind regards, willi
Asuncion, Paraguay

Liebe freunde,

Auf Seite 10 lesen wir: