When I was in grad school I did my thesis on Local Area Networks - it was a last minute arbritary selection done at the suggestion of my wonderful classmate Richard Mack. I did the work of the technology assessment under the direction of my tech guru, brilliant beyond words Kirt Olsen. Cut my teeth! Over more than a year, while working nights at BU Mugar Library, I came up with the estimate that in five years LANs would be a $1B industry. I couldn't believe it - but it happened. What an honor it is for me today to interview Bob Metcalfe, the most pivotal and compelling individual figure in those developments! He has a great spirit still today, and enthusiasm for technology that continues to be an influence on us.
Metcalfe postulated a law that describes - let's say - the influence on node counts on system behavior. I thought to ask him for his thoughts on the worldwide network imbroglio we now face.
Metcalfe: I think networking has over-delivered. In a short 50 years we’ve reached three quarters of the human race and we’re doing so with ever-rapid increase — so much so that connectivity has overwhelmed us. We don’t know what to do with it.
A number of pathologies have developed — you may remember the first pathology of the Internet was pornography. And they had to pass an act of Congress — the Communications Decency Act — to deal with it. And then along came advertising, which for a while was viewed as a pathology. But then we realized it was going to finance the entire Internet. And then came spam, which was a pathology, and we’ve pretty much handled spam — almost. Then, we have fake news.
My view is that we have a series of pathologies that we handle as they arise. But the real cause of our problems is that we don’t really know how to manage connectivity quite yet.
Courtesy VentureBeat
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