Re: <nettime> 'IANA' to revoke .su ccTLD? digest [pope bradley elloi elloi]

[Benjamin Geer <ben@beroul.uklinux.net>]

On Fri, 25 Oct 2002 13:54:08 -0700 (PDT), Morlock Elloi wrote:
> normal communication addressing needs can be handled
> locally. Most people don't care about global
> visibility.

Consider nettime.  I suspect that its subscribers are all
over the world.  If nettime didn't have global visibility,
it would be a lot harder for people to subscribe.  You
mention uucp; I remember those days, and it was a huge pain.
In order to send someone an email, you had to know which
nodes were connected to which other nodes, along the entire
route between you and the destination.  It was a lot harder
than sending them a letter via the postal service.

It seems to me that with the approach you're suggesting,
search engines would become unusable.  You'd be given a page
of search results, and then in order to look at any of those
sites, you'd have to look at your Internet Route Atlas, and
painstakingly trace a route to each one of them.

I think most of nettime's readers would agree that one of
the main benefits of the Internet is the ability to get
information from all over the world, quickly and easily.
Also, the Internet has been a good tool for social movements
because it facilitates global communication among large
numbers of people.  Crucially, this is feasible because each
address is equally visible no matter where you are.  If
everyone had to do their own routing, only technical wizards
would be able to use the Internet in this way.  In effect,
there would be no Internet.

Ben

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