[governance] IANA contract to be opened for competitive bidding on November 4

[Daniel Pimienta]

I cannot resist agreeing and complementing Ian's statement on a 
subject which is quite sensitive when one of the keywords for the 
present and future of networks is clearly "internationalization".

The day we have been confusing the Internet protocol  (TCP-IP) with 
the network of networks (the Internet) we have been helping  the 
"official history of the Internet" to make easily its way into 
medias. And as most "official history" it is a subttle manipulation 
of facts (some sort of official histery...;-)) towards some 
particular interests.

In networks, there are two layers not to be confused: the 
technological one (referred by Ian) and the sociological (every thing 
we could be referred as "the culture of networks" which deal with 
users and applications and how they relate to each other and how this 
impact the life of people and communities).

Ian stated, with examples, that the story of the technological layer 
is not so simple as stated by the official history (Arpanet being the 
"father of everything") . We could add, beyond national research for 
networks in some European countries, the networks protocols of large 
companies such as IBM, Digital or Bull. The basic high level 
functional building blocks of networks, from which the rest can be 
built upon, whatever the protocol, are email, file transfer and 
remote logon. In 1970, many employees of large computers companies 
were using those functions worldwide, although restricted to their colleagues.

So in few words in the early 70's many groups world wide have 
experimented with networking as a technological matter; nothing has 
come from scratch in US DoD and has evolved solely into what we got today!!!

As far as the sociological layer is concerned, and indeed real 
history will remember this one as the most impacting for society 
(note below), the credit to be put on Arpanet and follow-up  IP 
architecture is not null (the wonderful participative system of RFC 
and IETF which has allowed the architecture to evolve better than any 
other .. and, in any case, better that the defunct OSI system so 
strongly pushed by European Union as the orthodox norm til 92).

However, this contribution is quite marginal compared to the newtorks 
which have created, in the 80's, the foundation of the network 
culture: BITNET/EARN, with its strength on the academic and research 
world and UUCP (including USENET) with its strength in the 
libertarian circles, to cite only the two most importants (the book 
"The Matrix", from John Quarterman, remains the bible for whoever 
wants to understand network history at the pre Internet stage). And 
those two networks are not binded to any specific countries and the 
history was truly international. The charter of BITNET has made more 
for network culture than any other technical invention. LISTSERV, the 
father of virtual communities, was designed in Ecole des Mines, 
Paris; The World Wide Web was designed in CERN Geneva and an 
interesting technical challenge would be to decide wether the web 
protocol would have emerged on the top of other protocols than IP 
(says OSI or BSC/RJE for instance).. which I think is true. Anyway, 
during the period which has marked the creation of network culture, 
the 80's, Arpanet has hardly the influence of the other networks 
which figure of users climb to 2 millions in 1990.

Equalling The Internet (the net of net) with Internet (the protocol) 
tends to blurr this part of the history and move unjustifically 
credits from other efforts towards a single one.... and accidentaly 
(?) give national credits to a single country. This is why, in any 
language, I personally keep differenciating "Internet" and "The 
Internet" and  we should  accept that the Internet is a collective 
effort were people from all around the world have contributed in a 
complex and not straightforward history.


Note: If one analyze, for instance, the impact of the car industry in 
the life of world wide citizen, has the design of the engine, wether 
it is diesel or gas, such an importance compare to the sociological 
effects of the functionality of being able to move people and objects 
at various times the speed of a walking person?

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