Networked
From the Editor in Chief...
Water Music
Robert E. Filman • NASA Ames Research Center • fiiman@computer.org
In "The Green Isle in the Sea,"^ James Thurber
relates a Lemony Snicket-style series of unfor-
tunate events that happened to an old gentle-
man one day, concluding with a moral amplifying
a theme from Robert Louis Stevenson: "The world
is so full of a number of things. I am sure we
should all be as happy as kings, and you know
how happy kings are/'^
How Happy Are Kings?
On Wednesday evening, 17 July 1717, King George
I took his nobles out for an evening dinner cruise
on open barges, proceeding up the Thames to sup-
per at Chelsea. One barge held fifty musicians
playing George: Ffideric Handel's WfltefAfusic,
composed especially for the occasion. The royal
bash must have been a blast; the king liked the
music so well he had it played three times, and the
party didn't make it back to St James until after
four in the morning.
Sometimes it's good to be king. You can get
Handel to compose symphonies for you and have
command perfo.nnances.wMeyQu,,.d^^^ On ..the
other hand, I have it much better than George in
many ways. Although 1 can't summon fifty musi-
cians to play Handel, I can choose to listen to works
by Handel and a large variety of his successors
nearly instantaneously, played by the best musi-
cians in the world, who don't complain even when
I demand five or six consecutive performances.
Chelsea was a big trip for George; but I've flown
thousands of miles in the time it took him to go
there and bacL My palace, while not as large as St.
James, is centrally heated and air conditioned. My
doctors also know more tricks than just how to
apply leeches. About the only thing George had bet-
ter than the average IC reader was in the arena of
personal service — George had a retinue to do his
bidding, whereas all I have is Google.
What, Me Worry?
George worried about the Jacobite rebellion (and
the attempts to restore Catholicism to England),
how best to extract money from his position, and
his inability to get along with his son, the future
George 11. I worry about many things - among
them, the Internet.
What makes the kingdom of the Internet spe-
cial is its universal, bidirectional availability. That
is, anyone can be a publisher, posting whatever
they like without someone else's approval; being
a consumer is even easier because search mecha-
nisms such as Google and its friends simplify
matching up interested information producers,
consumers, and exchangers; and the entire mech-
anism is priced (at least for us twenty-first centu-
ry kings) quite modestly
What forces threaten our kingdom? Vandals,
governments and economics.
Vandals, Governments,
and Economics
The Internet grew out of a scientific experiment
among cooperating laboratories. As often
remarked, this arrangement deemphas securi-
ty issues - the club's members could be expected
to be well-behaved. Mechanisms such as really
keeping track of who was sending which packets
and changing which routing tables weren't criti-
cal. Unfortunately, the low level of security appro-
priate for an academic research platform seems
inadequate for a world-wide system for business,
commerce, and entertainment
The imagination (and sometimes, lack of imag-
ination) of those who abuse the system has been
impressive. WeVe lost news to the hucksters and
might be headed the same way with email and
spammers. The typical computer user's naivete has
made the Internet prime ground for phishing and
identity theft. The increasing availability of wireless
solutions for various devices will likely soon lead to
laptop infections, caught solely through the devices'
proximity to other machines, and perhaps even cell
phone viruses. The number of ways that remote
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mechanisms can cause programs to
execute (and be embedded) on local
machines, and the uses that attackers
can put such drones to, are astounding.
I tiy to avoid these problems by using
older technology (I don't think my cell
phone is smart enough to support a
virus) and less-popular operating sys-
tems. But as Thurber also observed of
the fly who avoided the empty spider's
web but rushed to the crowded flypa-
per, "There is no safety in numbers, or
in anything else."^
If the vandals don't do in the Inter-
net, various governments just might.
The purpose of government seems to
be to pass laws, and those who pass
laws are sure of the rightness of their
opinions. We have European govern-
ments trying to outlaw selling Nazi
paraphernalia, commonwealth gov-
ernments asserting the primacy of
English-style libel laws, American
states asserting demands for commer-
cial disclaimers and puritan Web site
content, and totalitarian governments
subverting search engines to control
what their populations can find out
about. All are certain that their rules
apply not only to people publishing
things within their jurisdictions but
also to people publishing things that
might be viewed within their realms -
that is, everybody.
If governments' moral principles
don't do in the Internet, their economic
meddling, or lack thereof, just might.
Every business would like to extract
monopoly profits; for many activities,
such as Internet connectivity and
telecommunications, monopolies are
natural equilibrium points. Monopolies
increase one player's profits at a cost to
society as a whole — hence, we have
various rules and regulations governing
corporate behavior. It's easy for govern-
ments to get this kind of thing wrong,
particularly because they're more sus-
ceptible to ideology and external influ-
ence than principled engineering.
Economics holds other threats to
the Internet. Just as it's not good for
one player to gamer monopoly profits,
it's also not good for there to be no
profits. Our Internet must thus evolve
to a point where service providers
(whether telecommunication compa-
nies, engineers, or creative artists) get
the right amount of encouragement for
their efforts. Globalization, winner-
take-all conflicts, regulation, and
deregulation all have the potential to
so dirty the playing field that playing
is no longer worthwhile.
So that's how happy this king is.
There is much to be optimistic
about, but 1 hardly lack for worries. I
suspect you're like that too. [D
References
1. J. Thurber, "The Green Isle in the Sea," The
NcwYoTkcT, 17 Feb. 1940,
2. R.L. Stevenson,^ Child's Garden of Verses,
Chronicle Books, 1989.
3. J. Thurber, "The Fairly batelligent Fly." The
New Yorker, 4 F^h. 1939.
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