End-to-end Arguments in System Design

The classic paper on the underlying architecture of the Net by Saltzer, Reed and Clark.

Press Freedom — what freedom?

From Karlin Lillington’s weblog…

Gavin’s link to Tom McGurk’s amazing conversation last Sunday with venerable BBC correspondent Katie Adie, on the US censorship of how journalists present the situation in Iraq, has been picked up by Megnut, so imagine this will get a good and needed airing in the US. Basically, the Pentagon has told journalists they may well be fired upon as they try to upload information back to networks (presumably because the signals may be confused — obviously not because the journalists are considered hostile to the US POV – but really, this is a shocking sort of threat even as it stands). There’s a link to the show transcript as well. Unfortunately, Megnut seems to doubt this could be true because the US media isn’t reporting on it [mirthless laughter]. As an American journalist living abroad, who’s been back several times to the US in recent weeks, I can tell ya, folks: the US MEDIA DOESN’T REPORT a whole heck of a lot of perspectives/stories/breaking news/background that would conflict with the Bush admin position and what it does report is done so as if reporting on the home team at a football match. I noted Dan Gillmor’s wholly correct take on this recently; Gavin also links to it here. The worst perpetrators are Fox and CNN — CNN of course also being the main source of many American’s news on the pending war. What has become of this once-pioneering network? It is just a yapping lapdog these days.

Small worlds and networks

I’ve been reading Barabasi’s book Linked: the New Science of Networks, which is not the world’s greatest read but very interesting nonetheless. It’s clear that there’s a lot of intriguing mileage in the notion that the principles underpinning networks span both technical and social systems. Then I came across Steven Johnson’s article about social network mapping software, which in turn reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Cat’s Cradle and Howard Rheingold’s new book, Smart Mobs, which I’ve ordered and Amazon have just told me in an email is being delivered tomorrow. I’ve also had a look at the MIT work in this area. And all without leaving my study. No wonder people love the Web.