RE: Solving the right problems ...

[Henry Sinnreich]

Is the sender anonymous or could we know name and affiliation?   Thanks,   Henry Sinnreich MCI   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2003 11:10 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Solving the right problems ...   Vinton,   I bow to your position.  We once had offices very close to each other.  Remember MCI Mail?   I am surprised you're back with MCI or whatever.    But...   Having quietly listened to what's being said, who's saying it, and where they are ...   I am reading email from some good thinkers, obviously good people, not quite open source gnomes, but close.   What's in it for me, or the world?  Obviously IETF picks some pretty nice places to meet.  And it is a pretty impressive org to work with to pretend to care about making a difference.  Hey, if you're in academia and want to eat, you'd better get some corporate funding.  Where do we go from here?  Eating good.  Unemployment bad.    Well OK, what's best?  What's acceptable?  What keeps people employed? Bottom up?  Start with the itsy-bitsy, bit-by-bit lower level protocol bits and bytes and try to complete the Tower of Babel (which by the way I think was in Iraq), or take an Alan Turing type deep thinking approach that no employing company can or will afford?  (I wonder why he ate an apple spiced with cyanide?)    OK.   Here's the point more specifically.  Considering the DEEP ISSUES people are beginning to discuss ( OK you do recognize them as deep issues right?) IETF is at a crossroad.  A "paradigm shift" from within is not possible.  Not given the funding employers.  Or the controlling employers.  Do you have the chutzpah or the intellectual purity to see the future beyond your next pay check?  Or, is this beyond the IETF, which I suspect is the case.  Or do we just wait for the Tower to complete and buy a farm in Montana?