KindleToday everybody from George Bush to Mike Powell to the wise executives of Silicon Valley are talking about broadband, broadband, broadband. But broadband without real internetworking, without the pure, stupid, end-to-end Internet, will be as useful as a television that can order pizza. I'd rather have the Internet over a plain-old dial-up connection than broadband with some form of pseudo-internetworking.Link Discuss (Thanks, Lee!)So if you hear that somebody is going to "enhance" the Internet -- to make it more efficient, to Pay the Musicians, to Protect the Children, to thwart hackers, to enhance Homeland Security, to find Osama, or whatever -- this is almost certainly propaganda from the powerful businesses that are threatened by the Internet. Remember that the Internet became the success it is today -- and the threat that it is to existing telcos -- because it is a Stupid Network, an end-to-end network.
I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.