[discuss] Another couple of items

Tue Jan 14 01:42:09 UTC 2014

On 14/01/2014 11:35, Avri Doria wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> At risk of being labelled an Ig professional, which sounds like a bad
> thing to be, I wish to comment a little.
> 
> On 13-Jan-14 17:01, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>> I've posted another couple of items that may be of interest.
>>
>> https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~brian/ClassifyingLandscape.pdf
> 
> 
>> Three types of issue:
>> 1. Matters of public interest regardless of the Internet;
>> 2. Matters of some public interest specifically linked to
>> the Internet (“boundary issues”);
>> 3. Technical matters of limited public interest
> 
> Here I think you miss one type which varies from you others:
> 
> 4. Issues that while of public interest regardless, are transformed by
> the Internet.
> 
> These go beyond the boundary condition you define.
> 
> You also seem to not admit to the degree to which technology cannot be
> separated from its public impact and that this is what produces public
> interest.  

No, what I'm saying is that the public impact, in the vast majority of
cases, is not the result of implementation choices. It's a result of
fundamental aspects of IT, not of design choices by Cerf, Kahn,
Mockapetris and all the others. That's the point of my two slides
with 3 columns.

> And to some degree, each option in a protocol may have a
> social impact even if they only appear to be trivial technical choices
> of flipping one bit one way or another.

They may, but the vast majority don't, IMHO.

> Until we have done impact analysis of the technology, we do not know to
> what degree there are legitimate public interests attached to a
> particular bit of tech.  But there is an overriding public interest in
> knowing that impact and having the discussions.

I don't believe you can know it by a priori analysis. I certainly
believe that a posteriori analysis is useful (and that it will
show very few genuine impacts of specific design choices).

> Facile phrases we don't really define well, especially things like net
> neutrality, and the intentionally ambiguous language of diplomats? Sure
> we Ig professionals* have a real problem with that.

Yep, politicians are the worst; let's not enourage them.

   Brian

> 
> 
> avri
> 
> * which I define as anyone who has ever been paid for doing something
> Igish.  Many are just amateurs, who do it for the love.
> 
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