At 01:09 AM 3/24/99 -0500, Milton Mueller wrote:
>Whoever it is described IETF as the "single largest repository of sane
>understanding of the social consequences of the Internet."
>
>Social consequences, eh? Take that, all you economists, psychologists,
>historians, sociologists, law professors, and other rabble who think you have
>something to contribute. Who needs you? If I can design a protocol and make a
>computer hum, I must know all there is to know about the social
>consequences of
>the Internet.
Milton,
The logical process which takes a claim that one group is a large
repository of expertise, and turns it into an interpretation of that claim
as meaning that no one outside that group is relevant would be curious to
have explained, since it is such a creative logical process.
By way of similarly interpreting meaning, I gather that you consider direct
and long-term experience with the social consequences of the environment in
question to be irrelevant, particularly if one happens to have obtained
that experience while writing protocols?
I suppose it is also irrelevant that many of those within the IETF have
training beyond writing protocols, including some of those specialties you
cited, such as law and psychology?
Would it not be more productive to focus the moral outrage on the continued
detriment of the user community, who remain deprived on additional DNS name
space and DNS registration competition, after five years of delay?
d/
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