Jaap van Till has posted an aggregation of thoughts and links to remind us of what it seems we have so much trouble remembering: The Internet is not a thing but an agreement.

An internet, network of networks, is a voluntary agreement among network operators to exchange traffic for their mutual benefit. (The Internet is a prototype internet.) That’s all — it’s an agreement.

That’s from an earlier post by Jaap, which along the way links out to the World of Ends post that Doc Searls and I wrote in 2003 that aimed at explaining the Internet to legislators.

I sense that we are due for a shift in tides, maybe over the next two years, in which the point that needs making is not that the Internet is dangerous and sucks, but that it it is dangerous and sucks and is the greatest invention in the history of our species. Cf. Virginia Heffernan, Magic and Loss.)

This pendulum swing can’t come soon enough.

Categories: internet dw