Re: Protocols at the Point of a Gun

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 6:50 AM 4/11/96, Jeff Weinstein wrote:

>  Given that the IETF has no "official" (whatever that means) sanction,
>what would prevent any other organization from coming in and trying to
>take over their turf?  I saw an article today (sorry, can't remember
>where) that suggested a brewing fight between IETF and W3C over future
>HTTP and HTML standards.  If someone stands up and says that the IETF
>is becoming too slow and overcome by bickering (not my opinion, just
>a what if), and that their new group is better suited to setting standards,
>who decides who is right, and based on what criteria?  It seems that
>one aspect of anarchy is that anyone could move in and replace "their
>anarchy" with the "new anarchy".
>
>  Just some philosophical pondering late one night...

This is indeed an interesting philosophical question. Many have studied the
emergence of order in anarchic or chaotic systems: F. Hayek, R. Dawkins,
E.O. Wilson, W. Bartley, David Friedman, and many others.

Standards or modes have generally evolved without enforcement from a
central authority. Economies and markets are a good example (but perhaps
too loaded with baggage about politics, so I won't use markets as my
example here).

Language is the most obvious example of this evolution without central
authority. And everything in your paragraph above has an equivalent in
language. For example:

"It seems that one aspect of [the words we use] is that anyone could move
in and [introduce new words and others might start using them]."

Indeed, languages and cultures change. Sometimes slowly, and sometimes
quickly (a la punctuated equilibrium). But it is not necessarily an easy
thing to have such changes adopted. Inertia, other cultural/memetic forces,
and other factors give certain advantages to the status quo, with changes
percolating in. Sometimes changes happen rapidly, in an almost phase
shift-like way.

The introduction of Mosaic (and now Netscape) followed this pattern. Note
that no offical standards body dictated the form (quibblers may cite HTML
standards, but this is beside the point...), and it spread like wildfire,
either filling newly-created ecological niches or largely displacing
existing products (like gopher, archie, veronica, anonymous ftp, etc.).

A good place to read about some of this is Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control,"
where the title suggests the theme, that central control mechanisms are
dead. This applies to economies, cultural memes, evolution, and so on. And
of the aforementioned authors, Hayek's "Law, Legislation, and Liberty" is a
good source.

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
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