Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet • Hacker News Board

Re: Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

#161

Post by pastor_elm » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

adim86 wrote: post #103

I find this post quite disappointing. I don't mean to come off harsh but it is quite naive and utopian and I cannot take the call to arms seriously. Saying the internet went wrong is like saying the invention of cars went wrong cause we still have car accidents. For every powerful force in the world, it will be a source of good and bad things. The internet has changed the world, increased communication, allowed peopl…

>A person in Nigeria can teach themselves Hindu, just from pure curiosity and no budget

Again, these are poor examples. It's not terribly easy to learn a language for free using just the internet. Everything is freemium and it's only getting worse. It's arguably easier to go to your local library and use their resources.

Many people have this idea that some things would be impossible if not for the internet, but that definitely isn't the case.

Re: Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

#162

Post by strictfp » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

Internet only allowed us to witness another iteration of implemention of the nasty methods already employed by nations, corporations and other entities to assert their power over the general population; information hiding, secrecy, isolationism, monopolies, weaponization of information, denial of anonymity etc.

The original intent of internet was to establish a honest and open platform for information sharing, and for me (personally at least) the development so far has only convinced me that most establishments out there are utterly incompatible with those values.

Re: Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

#163

Post by nvr219 » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

thinkingemote wrote: post #76

nothrabannosir wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Formatted for mobile: > Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

Thank you. I'd imagine a bot that does the same wouldn't be popult with the mods?

Would sooner recommend adjusting the CSS

Re: Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

#164

Post by airstrike » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 3:15 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #111

ThomPete wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Created jobs, increased global trade, allowed for people to teach themselves, new types of products available, higher awareness about what is going on around you, technology share, open source, free products etc.

OK. Except for possibly "created jobs", it's not obvious to me most of those things lead to "lifting so many people out of poverty." (For instance, I suspect very strongly that "new types of products available" has nothing to do with lifting people out of poverty). I am gonna want some analysis based on actual numbers of some kind that shows the internet did those things, and it lifted so many people out of poverty.…

> I suspect very strongly that "new types of products available" has nothing to do with lifting people out of poverty

Your suspicion is wrong. GDP per capita has increased significantly in emerging markets where cheap labor creates these "new types of products", with China being the prominent example

> I don't even know if fewer people are "in poverty" now than pre-internet or not!

That is a well known fact, you'll just have to google it.

> I am gonna want some analysis based on actual numbers of some kind that shows the internet did those things

There are countless analyses on the benefits of globalization which was enabled in part by the advance of near-instantaneous telecommunication

Re: Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

#165

Post by JohnFen » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 3:15 PM UTC

winternett wrote: post #127

ThomPete wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Created jobs, increased global trade, allowed for people to teach themselves, new types of products available, higher awareness about what is going on around you, technology share, open source, free products etc.

These jobs are shrinking as low level apps get dumbed down... The process of creating a simple web site has gotten much much more complex as scripting languages have changed. I still can't believe we're compiling code for simple phone and web sites and apps. Corporations have lobbied to take away Net Neutrality, and to institute throttling and make running a personal web site much more expensive. Social media sites d…

> The process of creating a simple web site has gotten much much more complex as scripting languages have changed.

If your site requires any scripting at all, it's not a "simple web site".

Re: Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

#166

Post by Shivetya » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 3:15 PM UTC

segmondy wrote: post #97

The internet never "went wrong". Nor did it go right. If we want to talk about the internet going wrong, we can talk about running out of IPV4 addresses, the garbage that DNS/BGP can be. The insecureness of SMTP etc. Yet from a technical standpoint, it has gotten amazing. There was a time https/ssl was not a thing, when everyone shuffled data via FTP, when telnet ruled, when NFS was world rw and rlogin/rhost was the…

Right.

The technical issues are what went wrong, how to protect the net itself from those who would damage and abuse it. Those we seek to improve.

The people side will come with time. If anything perhaps it opens people eyes to just how many people who do not fit within the idealized society many expect or want to be part of. People will learn limits, learn about others, and eventually it will even out.

What it did right is free people from most every government out there and now those governments are fighting back. When you can now see for your self what conditions are elsewhere you are much harder to manipulate which means loss of control. It also shows that no matter how good you thought your government is/was there is room for improvement and their is a dark side. They will seek to divide us, make us fear others all with the promise that if we just let them take control of information again all will be right. Some do it at the point of a gun while others use a TV ad.

Simply put, mommy and daddy were wrong, that were no monsters, not real ones, but there are, they are us.

Re: Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

#167

Post by SlowRobotAhead » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 3:16 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #160

codegeek wrote: post #41

Personally, I think the internet has changed millions if not billions of lives for the better. Yes, it has introduced quite a few bad things like spam, malware, surveillance etc. but with most good things, comes a few bad things. Overall though, Internet has been tremendous in lifting so many people out of poverty AND creating jobs that otherwise people could not dream of before the internet. I can work for anyone ov…

> With all the hate social media gets for example, imagine a life without them again. I can imagine that easily. I know others differ, but is all social media went away tomorrow, my life would be none the poorer for it.

Its almost like most of us still remember life without the internet let alone social media.

I just personally stopped. I use reddit sometimes but otherwise I have been much happier for it.

Re: Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

#168

Post by gph » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 3:16 PM UTC

segmondy wrote: post #97

The internet never "went wrong". Nor did it go right. If we want to talk about the internet going wrong, we can talk about running out of IPV4 addresses, the garbage that DNS/BGP can be. The insecureness of SMTP etc. Yet from a technical standpoint, it has gotten amazing. There was a time https/ssl was not a thing, when everyone shuffled data via FTP, when telnet ruled, when NFS was world rw and rlogin/rhost was the…

Also somewhat ironic that the author mentions the internet was created/funded by the military as part of a program to keep up with the Russians technologically during the Cold War, then goes on to complain about Stuxnet and nation states using the internet for cyber warfare like they were never even involved in the first place.

Re: Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

#169

Post by ArtDev » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 3:16 PM UTC

mrlala wrote: post #110

jrochkind1 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your theory of how the internet has "lifted so many people out of poverty". I'm not saying I disagree with it necessarily, I don't even understand what you're suggesting enough to disagree or agree with it. It's definitely not _obvious_ to me that the internet has somehow lifted so many people out of poverty, I just don't understand what you mean.

Well, a homeless person with a smartphone has a hell of a lot better chance of getting a job than they did pre-smartphone, right? Maybe this can count as more of a smartphone thing an internet thing.. but it's still largely an internet thing that would allow someone in a rough spot to still be able to connect with people online and look/apply for jobs.

I don't see a lot of homeless people with cellphones. How would they even charge them? Library Internet seems like a better solution.

Re: Leonard Kleinrock on what went wrong with the internet

#170

Post by jjoonathan » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 3:17 PM UTC

themagician wrote: post #142

adim86 wrote: post #103

I find this post quite disappointing. I don't mean to come off harsh but it is quite naive and utopian and I cannot take the call to arms seriously. Saying the internet went wrong is like saying the invention of cars went wrong cause we still have car accidents. For every powerful force in the world, it will be a source of good and bad things. The internet has changed the world, increased communication, allowed peopl…

It’s more like inventing the bicycle and then having it evolve into a car, where your initial idea was for a safe, economical, sustainable way to get from on point to another. Instead we paved over all the sidewalks with freeways to make room insanely large vehicles that crash into each other and kill everyone involved. Sure, they get from one point to another faster and help you transport things larger than you imag…

You know we truly live in amazing times when our society can support a large class of people so far removed from the need to produce and transport physical goods that they can imagine a scenario in which the ability to do so using machines rather than armies of peasants, slaves, and pack animals is some kind of perversion.