Kerry Miller wrote:
>I think we are learning to hold a conversation. [...]
OK, I think I see where you are coming from.
>Specifically, I hoped to open the prospect of alternative ways of doing
>things; to get you to think, if you like, instead of palming off truisms
>and miseries about how excruciating hard/ expensive/ time-consuming it is
>to change anything in this world.
I guess what bothered me most about this was that the types of
proposals you made to me and the lists were not the same type you
would make in your profession for similar circumstances. In other
words, you hold the Internet to different standards than the
surveying profession. I'll grant that the Internet is (among other
things) an educational tool, but even educational tools have to have
some sort of structure they can rely upon so people can focus on
learning. For example, it would not be proper to require everyone to
change to names as numbers because that would interfere with the other
types of learning that go on on the net.
It's reasonable to suggest that prototypes be developed that can be
studied in testbeds before transitioning them to the Internet at
large. (In fact, DNS first started out as a few people at a few
universities, then it moved to the ARPAnet proper, and eventually was
adopted Internet-wide.) It's not reasonable to expect that everything
should be fundamentally changed immediately.
>{ In my responses to you, I did not mean them to be "this is the way
>{ it's done, and we won't change because we like things the way they
>{ are."
>But it *sounds* like it when you say, Its too much to expect
>everybody to change.
I hope what I wrote in the previous paragraphs clarifies what I mean.
>Again, when a telco changes an area code, theres a promotional
>period, there is a transition period, there are help lines, and the
>consequences of forgetting are after all not fatal. In this case, for
>the transition, Id suggest *no names would be issued: get folks used
>to working with IP# directly.
I think if you had suggested this in the first place, your intent
would have been clearer. Then we could debate whether it was
feasible to carry it out. Keep in mind that the transition to IPv6
has been extremely painful, despite a vast amount of work being put
into it, and this would be yet another fundamental transition. Also
consider that the telephone industry is much more mature than the
Internet. They've figured out ways to make these types of transitions
much less painful than we have. Consider the "pain of renumbering"
issues that have been debated with regards to CIDR and provider-based
addressing. (Also consider that the way the Internet has developed
has not been easy on the telco industry and is itself a controversial
subject.)
>I have no idea *what* will be the outcome of the tension between domain
>names as a pointer and trademarks as a 'property.' However, I see two
>camps who cant talk to each another, because they do not share a
>language in which to describe their problem -- and *thats a problem I
>think my concept plugs in to pretty neatly. I feel raher confident that
>if we can get a couple hundred people *thinking about, say, what would
>happen to the conflict if those characters which have been conventionally
>used in formulating marks were to be *disused in DNS? Would mark holders
>*insist on a system which recognized their 'names'? Does it address the
>concerns of the other 150 mark holders whose 'name' is the same as Name,
>Incs? (Is the introduction of those concerns into net governance
>*attractive??) Would it disrupt the functions of domain names as
>pointers? -- *something will come of it, which is considerably more than
>we've got now.
Possibly. I don't know if ifwp is the right list upon which to frame
those discussions in that manner. I don't mind having this type of
discussion, but I think the ifwp folks are looking for something
that's perhaps more solution-oriented than identify-problem-oriented.
>As I say, have you got another idea about getting folks to see that
>theyre in a learning process? -- that (while Im at it!) the primary
>value ('highest and best use') of the Internet is *educational, and that
>this business of whose site is called what is just an example (and a
>picayune example at that) of problems that *could be solved by people who
> consciously understood what they were doing? Im all ears -- but dont
>look for my immediate agreement, please!
It may be the case that in fact there are some fundamental problems
that need to be identified before any useful solutions can be
developed. I'm willing to accept that, but I don't know how the other
ifwp folks feel about it. My general feeling is that ultimately, the
Internet is a technology that grew up very quickly (in terms of the
way people are trying to use it) despite the fact that it is still
very much experimental. Mature technologies tend to have many of the
fundamental problems sorted out. A lot of what has happened in the
past 10 or so years consists of trying to graft things into the
existing architecture in the hopes that they will work until the
better conceived architecture can be deployed. In this process some
fundamental mistakes in both technology and policy were made. But
there is a desire to keep everything working, rather than to wipe the
slate clean and start over. Thus, the need to figure out how to
transition to better architectures while at the same time keeping the
existing architecture functional and able to grow so it is still
useful.
--gregbo
