Networks
by Chris Gulker
The Internet, a network to connect other networks, turned out to be a really good idea.Users of standalone computers quickly realized that computers got a lot more useful when you hooked them together. You could communicate with colleagues on other floors and in other buildings, without having to track them down.
Users of these local-area networks quickly saw the value of wide-area networks: you could get messages to the folks in the East Cucamonga office, despite the 12-hour time difference and often lengthy and peculiar telephone dialing codes.
The Internet was the last step: all the networks could now talk to all the other networks. Suddenly, everybody in the world who used a computer, was, theoretically, as easy to reach as the person next door.
And, as the network expanded from linking us just to fellow academicians or other co-workers, most of us discovered that the Internet, far from driving people into increasing isolation, actually works to bring us together.
People who'd I'd never have known who live in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Tonga and most of the United States are among those who've seen fit to communicate with me via the Internet, not to mention the gratifying number of UK residents who take the time to offer me well-though-out responses to this column.
We communicate because we share common interests: our boundaries are not political, or geographic, but human ones.
But networks existed before the Internet: the Net merely took the idea to the highest logical plateau.
Computer networks move parcels of information, packets of bits. There have been lots of atom-moving networks. Postal systems and airlines are examples of networks that move packets of atoms.
While the "Information Superhighway" analogy has probably been stretched out of all proportion, there are lots of similarities between bit- and atom- based networks.
Many modern airlines have hub and spoke topologies, as do most networks. Most airlines can get you from point A to point B via a variety of routes, of which only one is most direct. They can route you around problems, like locally bad weather. Ditto for networks.
Computer viruses spread on networks. Human viruses spread on airplanes (just ask anyone who flies a lot).
Airlines recently moved me, the atoms, while this column, the bits, was being written.
The airline network first moved me, part of a packet of 300-odd humans, from San Francisco to Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, from which a variety of other networks, like the Dutch rail system and (in my case) a taxi, reassembled the packets into new parcels of varying size.
Networks often achieve the same result, reassembling packets into different sizes depending on the particular underlying protocols and transport media, before relaying them to their respective destinations.
I felt the need to fly because I wanted to attend an interesting conference , called IFRA '97, dealing with newspapers, technology, and the future.
Arguably, I could have achieved the same end by using a bit network. I could have waited until the conference was over and read the presentations from a Web site, along with press coverage of the event. I could have emailed the presenters with my questions and comments. It sure would have been a lot easier.
But I went in person, hoping to influence things as they developed (troublemaker that I am). Once the attendees leave, the conference findings would be set in stone, beyond my ability to shape.
I can be more certain that my questions will be answered if I turn up in person, and ask more or less politely. An email might go unnoticed, especially if the person in question has never heard of me, or, cloaked by electronic anonymity, might choose to send a blistering response, wasting both our time.
Being seen with the right sort of people, at the right places, might convince others that I'm a whole lot more important, and knowledgeable, than I really am - probably couldn't get that effect by, say, being a name on a list of cc:s on an email.
I was also looking forward to becoming acquainted with Amsterdam (my first visit). Amsterdam the Web site, and Amsterdam, the city, are very different experiences. Atoms still count for something.
My neighbors at a central Amsterdam hotel turned out to be, of all things, a flock of sheep and goats, who seem to be an attraction for local children. If this woolly crew had been penned up next to the router moving my Web or email traffic, I'd have never known, and thus, never been amused by their antics.
Ditto for the ducks who inhabit the canal bordering the other side of the hotel, ditto for the Labrador retriever who amused me by snatching, of all things, grapes from a greengrocer's sidewalk fruit stand as I walked to the hall where the conference was taking place.
All those experiences would have been hard to come by on the Net (imagine explaining why there was a hypertext link to "dog stealing grapes").
It would also have been hard for me to influence the proceedings. In person, I can create a row, a stir, an imbroglio. I can nurture debate, incite riot and even express opinions.
Perhaps I could encode some of my basic trouble-making tendencies into an agent program that could attempt similar mischief electronically.
An opinion detector agent would sniff out the point of view expressed in any email, and immediately dispatch a contrary missive - a practice not a little in evidence during this conference, and many others I've attended.
Where the atom-based network let me waste people's time and money, bit-based means I'm merely wasting their CPU cycles and bandwidth.
Surely, this is progress.
This page was last built with Frontier on a Macintosh on Wed, Oct 22, 1997 at 7:16:31 PM.
