As Mike Pastore
pointed out yesterday, we've made little headway in our battle to rid the Internet of spam.
And while
some remain hopeful that we really can defeat the spam monster, others -- in this case David Clark of MIT -- fear for the very future of the Internet itself. Clark, quoted in a
multipart article in MIT's Technology Review, argues that its lack of built-in security, along with its increasing inability to easily accommodate emerging technologies, could make the Internet not worth the hassle:
"We might just be at the point where the utility of the Internet stalls -- and perhaps turns downward."
I like this description of the contemporary 'Net experience by article author David Talbot:
[F]or the average user, the Internet these days all too often resembles New York's Times Square in the 1980s. It was exciting and vibrant, but you made sure to keep your head down, lest you be offered drugs, robbed, or harangued by the insane.
All of that happened to me when I visited Times Square in the '80s. And the same thing is happening on the Internet today, only now the insane are called bloggers.
According to the article, "Clark argues that it's time to rethink the Internet's basic architecture, to potentially start over with a fresh design," rather than trying to make do with the current flawed architecture cobbled together over many years.
It's pretty fascinating, high-level stuff. And while the notion of rebuilding the Internet from scratch to make it less vulnerable to spam, viruses and other cyber-scum seems daunting, the alternative is to let
this Times Square get worse.
Put me down as in favor of a do-over.
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