[lbo-talk] Jobs

Tayssir John Gabbour tjg at pentaside.org
Fri Oct 7 21:53:58 PDT 2011


On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 5:14 PM, // ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
> While it is technically true that the Internet was born of DARPA requirements and funding, I think that case is often overstated. Not only was data networking an area of existing research inside US and European labs, but also the first version of the full scale Internet as we know it was born on NSF funding and an NSF managed backbone - which leaves intact Doug’s basic point about public funding.

And DARPA and NSF aren't that different, in the end — they both end up serving the government's agenda, on marketplace and military. From Schmidt's _Disciplined Minds_:

'Whenever a question has any bearing on this sensitive issue,

scientists choose their words very carefully. For example, when

one puts the question, "Who supports your work?" to professors

with Navy funding, they are likely to answer quietly, "ONR." They

are very unlikely to say, "Office of Naval Research," because of

the nasty words "naval research," and they are even more unlikely

to say simply, "the Navy," because that sounds downright

military. On the other hand, professors with NSF money will

answer the same question proudly, "NSF", or just as likely, "the

National Science Foundation." They are delighted to answer the

question, especially if their work looks as if it might be

motivated by military or marketplace goals, because the

"Foundation's" name and image ring of pure science, the quest for

truth and, above all, the individual scientist's own

agenda. Perhaps the least deceptive and most informative answer a

scientist can give to the question, "Who supports your work?" is

simply, "The government."'

http://books.google.com/books?id=4aScfMumCMoC&lpg=PA66&pg=PA67#v=onepage&q&f=false

All the best,

Tj

On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 5:14 PM, // ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
> This thread has yielded some interesting comments which encourage me to respond, despite Fernando Cassia’s misplaced belligerence towards me.
>
> While it is technically true that the Internet was born of DARPA requirements and funding, I think that case is often overstated. Not only was data networking an area of existing research inside US and European labs, but also the first version of the full scale Internet as we know it was born on NSF funding and an NSF managed backbone - which leaves intact Doug’s basic point about public funding. Andy has already noted the major contributions of monopolist funded Bell Labs, but I will also point out the importance of people funded UC Berkeley.
>
> Angelus Novus points, quite correctly, to the libertarian leaning of the US Linux/OpenSource movement and the disconnect with the way the same operating system is perceived in Europe. At the same time, this libertarianism is/was a trend born from and maintained by Linux’s creator, the European Linus Torvalds now living in the USA, in contention with both the public, university model of competing systems like Minix (from Tannenbaum) and the politically sophisticated FSF movement born in the USA (Richard Stallman). The Linus brand of wilfully naive liberal-libertarianism can also be seen in the early years of the IETF (“we do not believe in kings, democracies…”, etc).



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list