World of Ends

World of Ends	.
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by Doc Searls and David Weinberger	.
Last update: 3.10.03 (More typos fixed 1.29.08)	.
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There are mistakes and there are mistakes.	.
Some mistakes we learn from. For example: Thinking that selling toys for pets on the Web is a great way to get rich. We're not going to do that again.	.
Other mistakes we insist on making over and over. For example, thinking that:	.
...the Web, like television, is a way to hold eyeballs still while advertisers spray them with messages. ...the Net is something that telcos and cable companies should filter, control and otherwise "improve." ... it's a bad thing for users to communicate between different kinds of instant messaging systems on the Net. ...the Net suffers from a lack of regulation to protect industries that feel threatened by it. | .
When it comes to the Net, a lot of us suffer from Repetitive Mistake Syndrome. This is especially true for magazine and newspaper publishing, broadcasting, cable television, the record industry, the movie industry, and the telephone industry, to name just six.	.
Thanks to the enormous influence of those industries in Washington, Repetitive Mistake Syndrome also afflicts lawmakers, regulators and even the courts. Last year Internet radio, a promising new industry that threatened to give listeners choices far exceeding anything on the increasingly variety-less (and technologically stone-age) AM and FM bands, was shot in its cradle. Guns, ammo and the occasional "Yee-Haw!" were provided by the recording industry and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which embodies all the fears felt by Hollywood's alpha dinosaurs when they lobbied the Act through Congress in 1998.	.
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it," John Gilmore famously said. And it's true. In the long run, Internet radio will succeed. Instant messaging systems will interoperate. Dumb companies will get smart or die. Stupid laws will be killed or replaced. But then, as John Maynard Keynes also famously said, "In the long run, we're all dead."	.
All we need to do is pay attention to what the Internet really is. It's not hard. The Net isn't rocket science. It isn't even 6th grade science fair, when you get right down to it. We can end the tragedy of Repetitive Mistake Syndrome in our lifetimes — and save a few trillion dollars' worth of dumb decisions — if we can just remember one simple fact: the Net is a world of ends. You're at one end, and everybody and everything else are at the other ends.	.
Sure, that's a feel-good statement about everyone having value on the Net, etc. But it's also the basic rock-solid fact about the Net's technical architecture. And the Internet's value is founded in its technical architecture.	.
Fortunately, the true nature of the Internet isn't hard to understand. In fact, just a fistful of statements stands between Repetitive Mistake Syndrome and Enlightenment...	.
The Nutshell	.
1. The Internet isn't complicated 2. The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement. 3. The Internet is stupid. 4. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value. 5. All the Internet's value grows on its edges. 6. Money moves to the suburbs. 7. The end of the world? Nah, the world of ends. 8. The Internet's three virtues a. No one owns it b. Everyone can use it c. Anyone can improve it 9. If the Internet is so simple, why have so many been so boneheaded about it? 10. Some mistakes we can stop making already	.
1. The Internet isn't complicated.	.
The idea behind the Internet in the first place was to harness the awesome power of simplicity — as simple as gravity in the real world. Except instead of holding little rocks tight against the big round rock, the Internet was designed to hold smaller networks together, turning them into one big network.	.
The way to do that is to make it easy easy easy for the networks to send and receive data to and from one another. Thus, the Internet was designed to be the simplest conceivable way to get bits from any A to any B.	.
2. The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement.	.
When we look at utility poles, we see networks as wires. And we see those wires as parts of systems: The phone system, the electric power system, the cable TV system.	.
When we listen to radio or watch TV, we're told during every break that networks are sources of programming being beamed through the air or through cables.	.
But the Internet is different. It isn't wiring. It isn't a system. And it isn't a source of programming.	.
The Internet is a way for all the things that call themselves networks to coexist and work together. It's an inter-network. Literally.	.
What makes the Net inter is the fact that it's just a protocol — the Internet Protocol, to be exact. A protocol is an agreement about how things work together.	.
This protocol doesn't specify what people can do with the network, what they can build on its edges, what they can say, who gets to talk. The protocol simply says: If you want to swap bits with others, here's how. If you want to put a computer — or a cell phone or a refrigerator — on the network, you have to agree to the agreement that is the Internet.	.
3. The Internet is stupid.	.
The telephone system, which is not the Internet (at least not yet), is damn smart. It knows who's calling whom, where they're located, whether it's a voice or data call, how far the call reaches, how much the call costs, etc. And it provides services that only a phone network cares about: call waiting, caller ID, *69 and lots of other stuff that phone companies like to sell.	.
The Internet, on the other hand, is stupid.1 On purpose. Its designers made sure the biggest, most inclusive network of them all was dumb as a box of rocks.	.
The Internet doesn't know lots of things a smart network like the phone system knows: Identities, permissions, priorities, etc. The Internet only knows one thing: this bunch of bits needs to move from one end of the Net to another.	.
There are technical reasons why stupidity is a good design. Stupid is sturdy. If a router fails, packets route around it, meaning that the Net stays up. Thanks to its stupidity, the Net welcomes new devices and people, so it grows quickly and in all directions. It's also easy for architects to incorporate Net access into all kinds of smart devices — camcorders, telephones, sprinkler systems — that live at the Net's ends.	.
That's because the most important reason Stupid is Good has less to do with technology and everything to do with value...	.
4. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.	.
Sounds screwy, but it's true. If you optimize a network for one type of application, you de-optimize it for others. For example, if you let the network give priority to voice or video data on the grounds that they need to arrive faster, you are telling other applications that they will have to wait. And as soon as you do that, you have turned the Net from something simple for everybody into something complicated for just one purpose. It isn't the Internet anymore.	.
5. All the Internet's value grows on its edges.	.
If the Internet were a smart network, its designers would have anticipated the importance of a good search engine and would have built searching into the network itself. But because its designers were smart, they made the Net too stupid for that. So searching is a service that can be built at one of the million ends of the Internet. Because people can offer any services they want from their end, search engines have competed, which means choice for users and astounding innovation.	.
Search engines are just an example. Because all the Internet does is throw bits from one end to another, innovators can build whatever they can imagine, counting on the Internet to move data for them. You don't have to get permission from the Internet's owner or systems administrator or the Vice President of Service Prioritization. You have an idea? Do it. And every time you do, the value of the Internet goes up.	.
The Internet has created a free market for innovation. That's the key to the Internet's value. By the same token...	.
6. Money moves to the suburbs.	.
If all of the Internet's value is at its edges, Internet connectivity itself wants to become a commodity. It should be allowed to do so.	.
There's good business in providing commodities, but every attempt to add value to the Internet itself must be resisted. To be specific: Those who provide Internet connectivity inevitably will want to provide content and services also because the connectivity itself will be too low-priced. By keeping the two functions separate, we will enable the market to set prices that will maximize access and to maximize content/service innovation.2	.
7. The end of the world? Nah, the world of ends.	.
When Craig Burton describes the Net's stupid architecture as a hollow sphere comprised entirely of ends3, he's painting a picture that gets at what's most remarkable about the Internet's architecture: Take the value out of the center and you enable an insane flowering of value among the connected end points. Because, of course, when every end is connected, each to each and each to all, the ends aren't endpoints at all.	.
And what do we ends do? Anything that can be done by anyone who wants to move bits around.	.
Notice the pride in our voice when we say "anything" and "anyone"? That comes directly from the Internet's simple, stupid technical architecture.	.
Because the Internet is an agreement, it doesn't belong to any one person or group. Not the incumbent companies that provide the backbone. Not the ISPs that provide our connections. Not the hosting companies that rent us servers. Not the industry associations that believe their existence is threatened by what the rest of us do on the Net. Not any government, no matter how sincerely it believes that it's just trying to keep its people secure and complacent.	.
To connect to the Internet is to agree to grow value on its edges. And then something really interesting happens. We are all connected equally. Distance doesn't matter. The obstacles fall away and for the first time the human need to connect can be realized without artificial barriers.	.
The Internet gives us the means to become a world of ends for the first time.	.
8. The Internet's three virtues	.
So, those are the facts about the Internet. See, we told you they were simple.	.
But what do they mean for our behavior ... and more importantly, the behavior of the mega-corps and governments that until now have acted as if the Internet were theirs?	.
Here are three basic rules of behavior that are tied directly to the factual nature of the Internet:	.
No one owns it. Everyone can use it.Anyone can improve it.	.
Let's look a little more closely at each...	.