Decentralization enables permissionless innovation

I’ve just started reading Inventing the Internet by Janet Abbate. The opening chapters are great, narrating Paul Baran’s efforts at RAND to design a nationwide communication network. Baran had one design goal for this network—survivability. Specifically, survivability in the face of nuclear catastrophe.

I’ve just started reading Inventing the Internet by Janet Abbate. The opening chapters are great, narrating Paul Baran’s efforts at RAND to design a nationwide communication network. Baran had one design goal for this network—survivability. Specifically, survivability in the face of nuclear catastrophe. What does it look like to design a system for survivability? This is a different very goal from those that drove the design of previous communication systems, goals like what is easiest, most efficient, most cost-effective, most profitable. Asking a different question lead Baran to different…

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