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Re: Comment on draft-iab-ipv6-nat-00

2009-03-18 13:25:13
Excerpts from Christian Vogt on Wed, Mar 18, 2009 09:44:20AM -0700:
On page 9, you state, based on a citation from RFC 4924:  "We believe
that providing end-to-end transparency [...] is key to the success of
the Internet."  I think this statement needs elaboration.  End-to-end
transparency is not a reason for the success of the Internet.  

I invoke Feynman and the "philosophy of ignorance".  The reason you
want e2e transparency is because you do not know what it might enable,
and we want that.  We _want_ to have uncertainty about what the future
of the Internet is.  We do not know what advantages or restrictions
our decisions will bring in the future.  The richness of the Internet
experience has come about because we have given end users the
capability to develop new ways of using it, and somehow managed to
have got out of the way, so far.

Feynman said (among other things -- search for it):

  Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve
  the solutions, and pass them on.  It is our responsibility to leave
  the people of the future a free hand.  In the impetuous youth of
  humanity, we can make grave errors that will stunt our growth for a
  long time.  This we will do if we say we have the answers now, so
  young and ignorant as we are.  If we suppress all discussion, all
  criticism, proclaiming “This is the answer, my friends; man is
  saved!” we will doom humanity for a long time to the chains of
  authority, confined to the limits of our present imagination.  It
  has been done so many times before.

Scott
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