IETFers know the Net is caught in the middle of a fatal embrace between the Godzilla of Microsoft and the smog monster of the Regional Bell Operating Companies – with the Terminator of local and national government intervention hovering nearby. Commercial enterprises, government forces, and telecommunications providers are concerning themselves with the Net as they never have before … Some of the best thinkers in the IETF believe the greatest hope for the relative freedom and independence of the Net lies in a kind of self-canceling effect that may result from the interplay of these new outside threats. Could be.
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. Borsook writes: ”IETFers know they have to worry about new users, dumb users, and commercial users, since what has an impact on one part of the Net inevitably has consequences on another. (Consider it another example of the butterfly-over-China effect.) And IETFers know the Net is caught in the middle of a fatal embrace between the Godzilla of Microsoft and the smog monster of the Regional Bell Operating Companies – with the Terminator of local and national government intervention hovering nearby. Commercial enterprises, government forces, and telecommunications providers are concerning themselves with the Net as they never have before – and in doing so, may screw up one of the most beautifully self-regulating, self-healing, adaptive, democratic, neural networks of people and technology the world has ever seen. As one IETFer put it, ‘A government interested in using us is a government interested in how we work.’ In other words, once governments realize what a treasure there is in the Net, they want to mess with it, regulate it, and censor it. The Exon bill may be coming to a country near you! Some of the best thinkers in the IETF believe the greatest hope for the relative freedom and independence of the Net lies in a kind of self-canceling effect that may result from the interplay of these new outside threats. Could be. And wouldn’t it be pretty to think so?”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Role of Govt./Industry
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