This is an interesting idea, but can people help me by posting examples of the type of crypto contract underpinned service that a16z are talking about?
Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
31–40 of 80 posts
Re: Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
#32It's unclear to me if the person who wrote "who controls the Internet" has ever interacted with core internet infrastructure at the router, BGP, major transit and transport service provider ISP level. I find it very hard to take seriously prognostication from persons who've never been responsible for even a small sized ASN. Persons I do take seriously when they prognosticate on the future of the Internet: The individ…
Isn't it possible to keep tracing things back to a more base layer beyond what you've described though? It's kind of arbitrary to draw the line any particular place. Like I could write "it's unclear to me if the person who wrote 'interacted with core internet infrastructure at the router, BGP, major transit and transport service provider ISP level' has ever interacted with electrical grid management, power plant oper…
No, TCP/IP and the ability to exchange routes between different networks is what makes the Internet. All of the value is in these interconnected networks and being able to send traffic to arbitrary endpoints regardless of your provider.
There is no “base layer” beneath TCP/IP. That’s the beauty of the Internet. The underlying ISPs connecting together will have different lower level protocols, different internal routing protocols, different hardware, different software, different power sources, different currencies, different spoken languages, etc.
AWS/Google/Cloudflare could cease to exist tomorrow and the Internet would continue on just fine. There would be a ton of websites down for US/European residents, but the Internet would work nonetheless.
Re: Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
#33It's unclear to me if the person who wrote "who controls the Internet" has ever interacted with core internet infrastructure at the router, BGP, major transit and transport service provider ISP level. I find it very hard to take seriously prognostication from persons who've never been responsible for even a small sized ASN. Persons I do take seriously when they prognosticate on the future of the Internet: The individ…
When I worked at one of the biggest ISP's in the world we got extremely despondent when https and other end-2-end encryptions became the standard because we were then unable to understand what traffic was on the wires. For ISPs and network providers now everything is just bits, and it's all commodity. The service layer is now implemented by clients.
I 'grew up' on networking in the late 90's when next to nothing was encrypted on the wire. The amount of understanding I was able to develop about how protocols work by just sniffing the packets was immense. I see folks coming out of school these days and while they far surpass my skills with software development they don't really have any intuition about how the protocols work at the network level, and as a result tend to flounder when things break.
However, if I hadn't stowed away all of that info 20+ years ago I think I would be in largely the same position. Obviously encrypted network protocols are essential for security and privacy, but it kind of sucks for folks trying to figure out how things work.
Re: Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
#34It's unclear to me if the person who wrote "who controls the Internet" has ever interacted with core internet infrastructure at the router, BGP, major transit and transport service provider ISP level. I find it very hard to take seriously prognostication from persons who've never been responsible for even a small sized ASN. Persons I do take seriously when they prognosticate on the future of the Internet: The individ…
When I worked at one of the biggest ISP's in the world we got extremely despondent when https and other end-2-end encryptions became the standard because we were then unable to understand what traffic was on the wires. For ISPs and network providers now everything is just bits, and it's all commodity. The service layer is now implemented by clients.
that's a good outcome. I would be very scared if the electrical utility company started looking at what i'm using the electrons for, and start disallowing certain types of uses for their electrons.
Re: Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
#35Much of the groundwork for the internet and open software happened in the 1970s and 1980s thanks to influxes of government funding, including at many universities and research organizations. I advocate for government funding for public good internet software, because the societal benefit can be so high, and the only alternative so far is monopoly-equivalent companies such as FAANG. In the United States, and in many o…
> Much of the groundwork for the internet and open software happened in the 1970s and 1980s thanks to influxes of government funding, including at many universities and research organizations.
Sure, that’s one part of it. Then it was industry that came in and made it all useful.
A significant portion of open source contributions to Linux are from people working for industry. Most of the advancements to make routing scale, etc were driven by the likes of Cisco, AT&T, etc.
Re: Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
#36> That’s why the pendulum is swinging back to an internet governed by open, community-controlled services. This has only recently become possible, thanks to technologies arising from the blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
I absolutely believe that the pendulum does need to swing back towards community controlled services but it's quite the leap to make to say that we can only do that now and only with a specific set of technologies that this VC firm happens to be heavily invested in.
What about good old fashioned trust? Producing and following open standards based on systems of collective decision making is how we built the web in the first place. We don't have to have zero trust networks with monetary incentives to rebuild the open web. We just need aligned individuals building towards a common vision of what the web should be.
I think our failure to do this well in the last decade has really been a failure of vision where former leaders in this space have either been too dogmatic to really represent our collective interests or all too willing to adopt antithetical business practices that compromise that vision in the first place.
We need new leaders to represent open innovation and to build alignment towards an internet that can really be a tool for disintermediation. Novel technology won't save the web. Focusing on money will only exacerbate the problems in the long-run. A culture of open innovation is the only thing that will help us realize the abundance of the digital economy. To build that, we need communities that we can all trust will remain aligned to our collective interests.
Re: Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
#37It's unclear to me if the person who wrote "who controls the Internet" has ever interacted with core internet infrastructure at the router, BGP, major transit and transport service provider ISP level. I find it very hard to take seriously prognostication from persons who've never been responsible for even a small sized ASN. Persons I do take seriously when they prognosticate on the future of the Internet: The individ…
This reminds me of the quote heard recently:
“If the critics aren’t getting their ass kicked in the arena, they’re not worth paying attention to”
Re: Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. We need a clear separation between system programs and application programs, so that a user can install the latest version of Python without it ever colliding with the outdated version of Python that the OS uses internally. The user shouldn't even need to be aware of the existence of the other Python. 2. The default way to install third-party application software shouldn't depend on repositories or servers. It sho…
> so that a user can install the latest version of Python without it ever colliding with the outdated version of Python that the OS uses internally Consider checking out nixos. Although this is already possible to do in normal distros. > The OS should define a stable format for the OS to install, update and uninstall these files Like .deb and .rpm? > 3. We need a desktop environment that's visually appealing and has…
> > 3. We need a desktop environment that's visually appealing and has a good UX.
> Such as KDE and the rest?
Just personal taste, but I don't find KDE visually appealing, and not only the default theme ("Breeze"). Unfortunately, I can't get used to the usability issues on GNOME.
IMO, the sweet spot of visually appealing and good UX is .... Windows 10 (sigh), followed by a close second in Cinnamon (and I'm also a fan of IceWM).
Re: Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
What problems are those?
1. We need a clear separation between system programs and application programs, so that a user can install the latest version of Python without it ever colliding with the outdated version of Python that the OS uses internally. The user shouldn't even need to be aware of the existence of the other Python. 2. The default way to install third-party application software shouldn't depend on repositories or servers. It sho…
> 2. The default way to install third-party application software shouldn't depend on repositories or servers. It should be based on installing files, just like on Windows.
Huh? This is already true.
Re: Who Will Control the Software That Powers the Internet?
#40Answer: The user.