Richard Bennett offers his assessment of Net Neutrality advocates as members of a cargo cult led by those charismatic Davids, Weinberger and Isenberg. Since meeting DW for the first time in 2024 and DI a year or so later, I’ve sat at their feet, signed over the farm to them, gone on a pilgrimage to Haight Ashbury and I have to admit that I am no closer to understanding why the Telco monopolists should be allowed to operate as if this were a free market than I was before I met them and still believed in QoS as the mystical method by which streaming traffic would ride in the fast lane while print jobs and FTP transfers would be shuttled off to a siding so the video could go through!
I was raised in the church of switched voice, paid homage to the gods of scarcity, mumbled prayerfully regarding the avoidance of contention on the thin copper strands. However the gurus David have shaken my faith in QoS as a meaningful concept in a network with abundant bandwidth. BigCo, the corporate outfit that buys a chunk of VPN throughput sweetly parsed via MPLS may be interested in chopping up its traffic using a QoS model, but us hippies just want access to a big pipe that’s always on and the stinking telcos can just get out of the way.
4 Comments
In the interest of literacy, let me point out that a “cargo cult” isn’t just any kind of cult, it has a unique relationship with technology.
And for a bonus, here’s a link to scientist Richard Feynman’s seminal essay on Cargo Cult Science.
Your reaction more or less proves my point.
PS: Sorry about Amanda Congdon losing her job. She’s so cute.
In the interest of accuracy, Richard, do you mind if I call you Dick?
Your trope regarding the “cargo cult” of net neutrality wasn’t that interesting really and my reaction went way over your pointy little head, but I can go with your observation regarding the gathering forces of a re-emergent hippiedom and the power of truth. Your impersonation of a corporate huckster and know-nothing PBX sales engineer tied to a 1980′s perspective of telecom technology — well, it’s priceless… best satirical act I’ve caught in years. If you ever play the Rivoli would you comp me a couple of tickets?
Thanks for the Feynman link! It’s been years and years since I read it. Don’t know what it has to do with bandwidth provisioning though.
But hey. Since we’re swapping links of dubious relevance here, try this old chestnut on for size! Thomas Kuhn…
Well, gotta go. Hard at work right now on research tying the murder of Dorothy Kilgallen to Ken Lay’s unfortunate fall upon his short sword.
So I have just one wish for you–the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.
my favourite dick. bandwidth notwithstanding.
you rock my world, fp: I was raised in the church of switched voice, paid homage to the gods of scarcity, mumbled prayerfully regarding the avoidance of contention on the thin copper strands. jeez. seen. respect.
Fascinated with my private parts? Odd.
“Fast pipe and always on” is so 90′s, Paynter. Networking in the 21st Century is wireless, and indeed all wireless networks have finite bandwidth. Bummer.
The Internet is not a network, it’s an interconnect between whatever networks people are actually using, and it better be a faithful intermediary or we’ll just stop using it.
It’s time for a new idea, bud.