Thanks for the reminder of acoustic couplers… Haven’t thought about those in years, and can’t really say that I wanted to… But I disagree that DSL and cable modems are the end of that thread. The same was said about 56K modems and ISDN.

IF we can keep the politicos from ruining everything, and IF we can maintain freedom of expression and all the liberties needed for the effort, and IF our world does not crumble around us in an absurdly irrelevant but devestating religious war, then those who have the interest and abilities will guide the further development of the net AND the web, whatever they both shall look like. Yes there will be missteps along the way - always have been.

Looking to the distant future, think holodeck, at least until Vulcan mind-melds are approved by the FDA…

You raise an excellent point, as usual, wrt the web as a metaphor. But I don’t quite see why that concern makes you cynical (if that’s the right word) about OWD. There are approximately 1.7 trillion other references to the “web” extamt, so dumping on OWD for it seems to me a bit like slapping down anti-cancer research (not to conflate the relative importance of the two) because cancer isn’t really caused by crabs as the name implies. In fact, I support OWD primarily because I think it’s politically useful to build a constituency of people who value the Web - and whatever it becomes or whatever comes next - and thus oppose the current threats from the incumbents and their congressional buttboys.

As for conflating the Web and the Internet, I’m on record (see “Small Pieces”) as thinking that that’s often ok to do. There are times and audiences where it’s important to distinguish the two, but there are also times and audiences where it doesn’t. Language happens. WRT to OWB, if I heard that in some city there was a pizza party where someone said “I love the Web because email has changed my life,” I would not sent off a stinging telegram telling that person that email isn’t the Web. But, that’s just me. As for Susan: She well knows the difference between the Net and the Web.

As for your upcoming rant: I can’t wait. But, from how you’ve teased us with it, I’d say that Susan Crawford is likely to be one of your most committed allies. Me, too.

As always, your pal and admirer,

David W.

Note I said conclusions about the question, not answers to the question. Those conclusions deserve airing, I’m sure, and this blog is not necessarily the place to air them. But entrenched power structures themselves deserve examination, whether they be corporate carriers or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

I liked the term ICANNographer and am glad that I could use it. Susan Crawford is of course on the ICANN board and so there’s an identification there. I think she has a tendency to conflate the net and the web, as perhaps do you although hopefully not “fatally.”

I recently spent some time with people who have vested interests in the web as it is evolving. I was depressed by what I perceived to be their acceptance of this slow process of evolution and a reluctance to surface revolutionary visioneering. Forgive the use of the “v” word, I beg you.

On Sunday Susan had a post about State of Play. In a related context, hundreds of thousands of people are entranced with “spaces” like Second Life and WoW. Teleimmersion is screaming straight at us while the duopoly is behaving like Ma Bell of yore… sucking every ounce of profit-juice out of a fully amortized investment and obfuscating the potential future.

I could go on… but probably best not to waste what might actually be a righteous rant in my own comments.

Again, Happy One Web Day, and let’s not lose track of the fact that 300bps TTY on acoustic couplers was pretty cool thirty or forty years ago. DSL and cable modems are just the end of that thread. What’s next? Will a “web” continue to be a useful metaphor? You and Susan know more about the possibilities than I do. But the whole cognitive linguistics thing from Sapir-Whorf to Lakoff has raised its hoary head and your colleague, the good Doc Searls makes well the point that we are driven by our metaphors, so how webby is it, really?

http://www.icann.org/biog/crawford.htm

Though I didn’t see a particular connection between ICANN _per se_ and OWD.

Happy One Web Day, my friend!