“We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code.” Which might translate to, “In the IETF, we don’t allow caucusing, lobbying, and charismatic leaders to chart our path, but when something out on the Net really seems to work and makes sense to most of us, that’s the path we’ll adopt.” … The IETF’s political culture is hardy enough so that the Net mechanisms and structures it has fostered may very well enable the Net to survive in good enough shape through the next millennium.
Predictor: Borsook, Paulina
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Paulina Borsook explains the workings of the Internet Engineering Task Force, the group behind the Internet’s protocols and engineering, quoting MIT professor Dave Clark. Borsook writes: ”Unlike most technical-standards bodies, the IETF has pioneered a culture of pragmatism (quit jawing, throw it out on the Net and see if it works). It maintains a high debate-to-politicking ratio: there may be 104 opinions in a room of 100 IETFers, but the work still gets done. Which is not to say IETFers have the finesse and indirection of 19th-century French diplomats: one IETFer, trying to avoid pissing matches over an issue, was heard saying, ‘I don’t think urinary contests will solve anything’; and another, regarding the organization’s expectations, ‘If you don’t write well, there are lots of standards groups in Europe that would love to have you.’ MIT professor Dave Clark, one of the grand old men of the Internet, may have unintentionally written the IETF anthem in his ‘A Cloudy Crystal Ball/Apocalypse Now’ presentation at the 24th annual July 1992 IETF conference. Today, it’s immortalized on T-shirts: ‘We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code.’ Which might translate to, ‘In the IETF, we don’t allow caucusing, lobbying, and charismatic leaders to chart our path, but when something out on the Net really seems to work and makes sense to most of us, that’s the path we’ll adopt.’ … The IETF’s political culture is hardy enough so that the Net mechanisms and structures it has fostered may very well enable the Net to survive in good enough shape through the next millennium. Never mind that Net hardware and software infrastructures struggle with a now-huge embedded base that makes technological innovation difficult. Never mind that Net culture hasn’t sorted out what to do with the shock of commercialization. Never mind that the IETF has evolved from a small group of lite geeks to a massive group of more average folks, a change on many axes that necessitates incremental growth. … Maintaining a low profile and peaceably going about its business as collections of True Masters always do, the IETF has always consisted of anyone (that’s right, anyone – an IETFer could be your mom, a former Soviet commissar of culture, or even a director of marketing) who wants to be part of the technical working groups charged with creating the standards and pathways that will move the Net into the next century. All you have to do is pay a token registration fee and sign up. No questions asked, no meritocratic credentials checked.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: How Anarchy Works: On Location with the Masters of the Metaverse, the Internet Engineering Task Force
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.10/ietf_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney