Fragile Internet Kept Intact by "Random Acts of Kindness"
Fragile Internet Kept Intact by "Random Acts of Kindness"
Posted 07/23/2009 at 3:24pm
| by Andy Salisbury
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According to a recent presentation by Harvard’s Jonathan Zittrain, the Internet’s delicate and vulnerable nature is held together by random acts of kindness.
As a key example, he cited when Pakistan’s government took YouTube offline in 2008. It wasn’t long before it was back, thanks to a largely unknown, unpaid and unauthorized team of volunteers. “It's like when the Bat signal goes up and Batman answers the call,” said Professor Zittrain.
The same social structure of those helping without any intention of compensation is clear on Wikipedia. “It's like dark matter in the universe. There's a lot of it, you don't see it but it has a huge impact on the physics of the place.”
Image Credit: BBC
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gibsurfer84
July 23, 2009 at 5:25pm
This guy is full of crap. One crappy country looses youtube for a day and he says the internet is fragile? Uh, no. The tubes will always be in a series. This guy is as bad as the d'bag that thinks 911 didn't have planes, only bombs.
OMFWTFBBQ
mesiah
July 23, 2009 at 8:19pm
This was a worldwide outage, not just in pakistan. It was caused by the pakistani governments telecom hijacking the youtube address and redirecting people to a different site. It was only intended to block people in pakistan but the hijack info leaked out into the greater www and effected most systems world wide. The service was down for about 2 hours before people figured out what was going on and informed the pakistani government.
As far as the claims of the internet being fragile, I think fragile was a bad term, but the underpinnings of the mans argument are sound. While the internet as a whole is pretty solid, events like the one above show that it doesn't take much to bring a part of the net to its knees. And you have to admit, a large portion of the work that goes on on the internet is done by folks like you and me who usually aren't making a dime off of it. Where would search engines be today if it werent for a group of geeks implementing one in their garage? Its stuff like that that makes the internet great.
comptech08
July 24, 2009 at 6:51am
They took one website down and they took the internet down to its knees? Sites always have down periods, rather it be maintainance or some hacker trying to have some fun his way.
mesiah
July 24, 2009 at 9:46pm
Good job, you can take things out of context to make a point, you should work in national media. My statement said they brought "A PART of the net to its knees" not the whole thing. The point was that it doesn't take much for a single person or a handful of people to cause a lot of trouble to a targeted part of the net. Is it easy to bring the entire internet down? no. Is it easy to knock your favorite site off line, or shut down your favorite gaming service for a little while? It's easier than you might think.
Muerte
July 24, 2009 at 11:13am
Miss the point much?
The point is that people that don't have a stake in the internet are the same people that make it go.
If we had to pay for even a 10th of the content on the internet no one would be able to afford it.
So is the internet physically fragile? Well actually it kind of is. A couple of well placed bombs on a couple of backbones and bye bye TF2 for awhile.
But what he's talking about is the internet as a social force that gets improved largely by people who do it just because they can.
I Jedi
July 24, 2009 at 1:13pm
In the way that you described it, I would agree. I agree that if the Internet were not so free, open, and now, more than ever, becoming a lot more open-sourced and becoming even more easily accessible to millions, then it might not survive in the way we see it today. The Internet, as we all should know, thrives on innovation and freedom. Without these two contributing factors, we wouldn't have what we have on the Net today. So, in that respect, I agree with you.
I Jedi
July 24, 2009 at 10:04am
Yeah, um, if anything, the Internet is able to withstand an atomic blast. I very much doubt its a "fragile" thing. Believe me, you might be able ot take down one sector of the Internet, but you can't take the whole thing down without blowing the entire planet to hell.
jcollins
July 24, 2009 at 1:16pm
The Internet used to be able to survive an atomic blast. Those days are long gone (once civilians got control over the infrastructure, less and less thought was put into hardening things against EMP).
dark218
July 23, 2009 at 6:27pm
I believe this actually took youtube offline worldwide, not just in pakistan as it was intended.
comptech08
July 23, 2009 at 5:10pm
I don't know how the internet can even be closley considered fragile. The internet is such a huge huge huge network spanning the entire world. To completely take it out would require probably a world wide nuclear war pretty much destroying everything on this planet. That doesn't seem fragile to me.
Muerte
July 24, 2009 at 11:10am
Actually there are a few backbones that the carry different portions of the world's internet data.
So can it be done? I'm sure it can. Hell a little glitch in a powerline took out a good portion of the US powergrid.
I Jedi
July 23, 2009 at 4:40pm
The Internet is, still, and will continue to expand rather or not a "kind" group of people help get Youtube back to a certain nation, which its government has blocked viewing of. However, in what form the Internet will take will always change as time goes on. So, I'm not quite sure I understand his point of view. :/
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