Be careful what you wish for II

A couple of days ago I commented on the irony of the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) sudden interest in --- and apparent fear of --- the power of the Internet they in fact helped create. The context of my comment was reported proposals within the DOD to try to seize control of the Internet in the name of national security.

I have some really bad news for the folks at DOD: IT’S TOO LATE!

You actually got what you wished for 30+ years ago, a hubless communications system that has now taken on a life of its own, and that is, indeed, uncontrollable. You wanted it designed so that it would be uncontrollable by our enemies (at the time the Russians), but I guess it never occurred to you that that sword cuts both ways (that you might not be able to control it either).

There is a telling historic precedent --- not that anyone in the Bush administration is noted for learning from the past experience (but that’s a different discussion) --- that you might want to investigate.

In the mid-1400s, a guy named Guttenberg did some tinkering with then existing, albeit primitive, printing processes. When he designed a practical system for moveable type and developed improvements to the inks and presses of the day, all he thought he was doing was making incremental improvements to current technologies. He had no idea he was setting in motion forces that would result in the end of the Feudal system and lead to revolutionary concepts like mass education and democracy.

Similarly, in the late 1960s all the early developers ---inventors, if you prefer --- of the Internet thought they were doing was figuring out a way for the then primitive computers to talk to each other. They had some vague notions --- dreams, if you prefer --- about exchanging information in a manner that we would today recognize as e-mail. But they had no idea they were setting in motion forces that would empower individuals on a global basis and that would change how we socialize and how we do business.

In the half century following Guttenberg, presses sprang up all over Europe, certainly producing their share of religious books, but interestingly the bulk of the books published then weren’t appreciably different than those published today, they were “how to” books. During this time the Catholic Church approved the publication of Bibles in native languages --- previously Bibles were only published Latin -- believing it would help promulgate the faith by making it accessible to more people. By some two decades later were German Bibles and Italian Bibles and Dutch Bibles and others in the hands of the masses.

But the Law of Unintended Consequences came into play and the church discovered that Bibles published in native languages was assisting in nationalistic feelings in those countries, in other words, it was helping diminish the power of Rome. So the church decided to rescind its blessing for native language Bibles. But, the inevitability of change had been set in motion --- it was too late!

The DOD of today won’t be any more successful in putting the genie back in the bottle than the Catholic Church of five centuries ago was.