# Some outcome summary

> This discussion is JUST about the structure below
> Try to terminate in 10min (cf. naive optimists)

What is/are our target audience(s)?
- not just an internal IETF review
- today's students

Dirk: two perspectives
1. The Internet as a public infrastructure
2. Internet networking as a vision (and continuous project)

Jörg: Get this done within two weeks or so

## I. What was the vision early on?

- What were the folks thinking when taking certain decisions (stuff less/not documented in the RFCs)?
- Trade-offs considered.

## II. Important principles for Internet to take off

- What did we get right?
- What did we get wrong?
- What were the reasons?
- (This is the "don't teach religion, teach reasoning" argument, related to topic IV below)
- This and IV seem closely related - combine?
- fold in research into evolving operational practice
- the important factor was to admit that we did not know a whole lot more than what we thought we knew and the research community was invited in to be a part of the effort and help us fill gaps in our understanding (we all told each other that the Internet was just an "experiment")

## III. Principles that evolved over the years

> e.g., more nuanced view today about postel’s principle

* what were the mass delusions that we all knew weren't quite right
* groupthink perception of inevitability (of something that then didn't happen or was subverted)
* gross misperception of important actors (Can we get IPv6 into Windows 95?)

* **Why** did these principles evolve?
* the principles were wrong in the first place
* environment has changed 1: (e.g., availability of tools, advance of technology)
* environment has changed 2: Maturity of the field - "academic experiment" to "global critical infrastructure"
* Change of scope - cat pictures vs medical instrumentation...
* Innovation driven by rough consensus of expressed need ("requirements"/"objectives"/"opportunities") rather than commercial pressures from individual actors

## IV. (Retrospective) Memory wipe: what would one do differently if we were to start over?

- networking taught as a history lesson that is passed down, but never questioned.
- What would we change if we were to start today


## V. Areas where there’s challenges today, and no clear principle to follow

- e.g., surveillance capitalism
- what could other "disciplines" learn from our experience?
- N.B. I interpreted the above as "what could emerging disciplines, that are today where the Internet wasa 50 years ago, learn from our experience."
- do we need principles or reasoning?
- We are at a unique moment for the Internet where many of the original inventors are still able to take part in the conversation. We can still see the Internet as a "living thing". In 60 years from how this will be an exercise in history and the tenets which we think of today as just working theories will probably be cast as immutable "laws". To counter this we need to concentrate on teaching and disseminating the "why" of protocol design, and not the "what" of particular technologies.)


## VI. Group work summaries

- need to see how to best integrate
- take two key areas: security + apps
- use as illustrations
- Can be extended with other topics that we didnt cover

## Potential publication venues

1. ACM CCR
2. IPJ

### Pointers

- networking taught as a history lesson that is passed down. but never questioned.
- Adoption formula for the technologies. How can we generalize this?
- Initial conditions of networking development is not going to happen again. Can we highlight 'learnings' that can transfer to cousin disciplines such as AI, etc.
- how did economy affect the process? Divide it from technical viewpoint.
- GH: We DONT need a clear principle to follow - quite the reverse.We are at a unique moment for the Internet where many of the original inventors are still able to take part in the conversation. We can still see the Internet as a "living thing". In 60 years from how this will be an exercise in history and the tenets which we think of today as just working theories will probably be cast as immutable "laws". To counter this we need to concentrate on teaching and disseminating the "why" of protocol design, and not the "what" of particular technologies.