#1 10 Commandments of the 'Net
Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2009 8:29 pm
[quote="ArsTechnica"]Write a new 10 Commandments of the Internet, Peter proposed, and draft them on a tablet PC on Mount Sinai.
The "Peter" in question was Internet historian Ian Peter, and the place was the UN-backed Internet Governance Forum 2009 held last week in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, a few kilometers from Mount Sinai.
Peter's model for his proposed commandments isn't Moses, but the engineers and computer science guys who dreamed up the Internet back in the 1960s, building it through an amazingly open and collaborative effort that continues functioning to this day. When he asked if anyone would be interested in formally documenting the principles of the Internet ethos, Internet ecosystem or whatever one might call it, hands shot up all around the room.
Thou shalt document thy networking principles
An all-star lineup of folks at the top echelon of the organizations that arose out of the principles established in the 1960s were at IGF 2009 to speak, and represented organizations such as the Internet Society, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. And everyone had an opinion about the issues most central to the Internet.
Daniel Dardailler of W3C said, "Computer science principles require that layers can work separately. The Web sits on top of the Internet. This separation is important. Everything has to be extensible. You want only one root—you want unique ID—we need to keep one root. The Web is putting data in the pipe and we don’t want the data to go faster through some sites without our knowledge. Common to Internet technology is that we are open-standards and open-source. Everyone should be able to test the system with their own platform. We want our technologies to be royalty-free. For the Web it’s important. We are at the top of the stack—there will be more things later on, but right now we are the interface. Everyone needs to have access to the system. It has to be visible to any type of device. Separation of content from implementation is paramount. Websites should have metadata.
“The principle that runs throughout all of what I have said is the principle of choice. I buy a computer in France, I arrive in Egypt, in my hotel I get WiFi and I can use it. We don’t want to go back to a point where we have incompatibility. The Internet has been on the forefront in regard to allowing people to participate in the design of communication.â€
The "Peter" in question was Internet historian Ian Peter, and the place was the UN-backed Internet Governance Forum 2009 held last week in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, a few kilometers from Mount Sinai.
Peter's model for his proposed commandments isn't Moses, but the engineers and computer science guys who dreamed up the Internet back in the 1960s, building it through an amazingly open and collaborative effort that continues functioning to this day. When he asked if anyone would be interested in formally documenting the principles of the Internet ethos, Internet ecosystem or whatever one might call it, hands shot up all around the room.
Thou shalt document thy networking principles
An all-star lineup of folks at the top echelon of the organizations that arose out of the principles established in the 1960s were at IGF 2009 to speak, and represented organizations such as the Internet Society, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. And everyone had an opinion about the issues most central to the Internet.
Daniel Dardailler of W3C said, "Computer science principles require that layers can work separately. The Web sits on top of the Internet. This separation is important. Everything has to be extensible. You want only one root—you want unique ID—we need to keep one root. The Web is putting data in the pipe and we don’t want the data to go faster through some sites without our knowledge. Common to Internet technology is that we are open-standards and open-source. Everyone should be able to test the system with their own platform. We want our technologies to be royalty-free. For the Web it’s important. We are at the top of the stack—there will be more things later on, but right now we are the interface. Everyone needs to have access to the system. It has to be visible to any type of device. Separation of content from implementation is paramount. Websites should have metadata.
“The principle that runs throughout all of what I have said is the principle of choice. I buy a computer in France, I arrive in Egypt, in my hotel I get WiFi and I can use it. We don’t want to go back to a point where we have incompatibility. The Internet has been on the forefront in regard to allowing people to participate in the design of communication.â€