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David H. Crocker is a principal with Brandenburg InternetWorking. He has contributed to the development of internetworking capabilities for forty years, first as part of the Arpanet research community and then in the commercial sector. His current efforts focus on the creation of Internet-based businesses built on a solid foundation of customer benefit and revenue potential.

Mr. Crocker's curriculum vitae is also available.

 

 

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Dr. Stephen D. Crocker

Because Cain wasn't entirely correct?
 
Thoughts
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Gender Neutral

Use "they" instead of he/she

Third-person gender neutrality writing is not improved with he/she— The American Heritage Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary folks see an easy, reasonable and established alternative.

Consider:

  • He/she is linguistically awkward and self-conscious.

  • He/she places 'he' first, thereby continuing a gender bias; alternating the combination merely makes the construct that much more awkward.

  • Alternating use of he and she again sustains a gender bias for each use and again sustains linguistic awkwardness.

 

Costs of Progress

From "Inherit the Wind"

Gentlemen, progress has never been a bargain. You've got to pay for it. Sometimes I think there's a man behind a counter who says 'All right, you can have a telephone; but you'll have to give up privacy and the charm of distance. Madam, you may vote; but at at price; you lose the right to retreat behind a powder puff or a petticoat. Mister, you may conquer the air; but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline.' Darwin moved us forward to a hilltop, where we can look back and see the way from the which we came. But for this view, this insight, this knowledge, we must abandon our faith in the pleasant poetry of Genesis.
 

Eight Fallacies of
Distributed Computing

Essentially everyone, when they first build a distributed application, makes the following eight assumptions. All prove to be false in the long run and all cause big trouble and painful learning experiences.

    1. The network is reliable

    2. Latency is zero

    3. Bandwidth is infinite

    4. The network is secure

    5. Topology doesn't change

    6. There is one administrator

    7. Transport cost is zero

    8. The network is homogeneous
 

The Beginning of the Web

As We May Think, by Vannevar Bush, July 1945
 

No One Could Have Predicted How the Internet Would Be Used

Except the folks who started it...

The Computer as a Communication Device
J.C.R. Licklider and Robert W. Taylor
Science and Technology, April 1968.

Face to face through a computer

At a project meeting held through a computer, you can thumb through the speaker’s primary data without interrupting him to substantiate or explain.

On-line interactive communities

Available within the network will be functions and services to which you subscribe on a regular basis and others that you call for when you need them. In the former group will be investment guidance, tax counseling, selective dissemination of information in your field of specialization, announcement of cultural, sport, and entertainment events that fit your interests, etc. In the latter group will be dictionaries, encyclopedias, indexes, catalogues, editing programs, teaching programs, testing programs, programming systems, data bases, and—most important—communication, display, and modeling programs.

...

What will on-line interactive communities be like? In most fields they will consist of geographically separated members, sometimes grouped in small clusters and sometimes working individually. They will be communities not of common location, but of common interest. In each field, the overall community of interest will be large enough to support a comprehensive system of field-oriented programs and data.

...

You will not send a letter or a telegram; you will simply identify the people whose files should be linked to yours and the parts to which they should be linked-and perhaps specify a coefficient of urgency. You will seldom make a telephone call; you will ask the network to link your consoles together,
 

Agreement

If we are all in agreement on the decision - then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.

Alfred P. Sloan