The other day, I was explaining to a reporter how I could be lumping in cellphones and the next generation of sensor networks into Web 2.0. “Well, Web 2.0 is really not just about the web. It’s really about the next generation of internet applications, and includes things like P2P file sharing and VoIP, which aren’t based on the web at all. And actually, now that I mention it, it’s really not even about the internet, narrowly defined as a class of TCP/IP-based networks. It’s really about the internet as it was originally conceived, as a ‘network of networks.'”
Those of you who were around in the 1980s will know just what I’m talking about, because that was originally what people meant by “the internet.” The term literally came into wide use to refer to a whole set of distinct but increasingly interoperable networks: the ARPAnet, CSnet, DECnet, the UUCPnet, EUnet, NLnet, FIDOnet…. In the late 80s, we actually published a book called !%@: A Directory of Electronic Mail Addressing and Networks, which covered how to address email across 190 distinct networks. (The title !%@ was homage to some of the many special addressing characters that were used before the @ crowded out all the others.) The inter-net was the interoperable network that came to connect them.
It’s good to remember this broad definition of “the internet,” because the internet is not just about TCP/IP, though it is about the principles that made the TCP/IP based network win out over all the others, and become the lingua franca of interoperability that it is today. We’re pushing the boundaries of the old internet, as it comes to include the cellphone network, telematics networks, and other emerging forms of connectivity.
So let’s ask, where else can we apply the principles that we’re learning from the internet?
Round 2: A series of occasional postings around the theme that patterns and ideas recur, or as Arlo Guthrie said in Alice’s Restaurant, “come around again on the gee-tar.”