Internet redundancy: August 19, 1996 issue of New Thinking

August 19, 1996 New Thinking:
Internet redundancy

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August 19, 1996

Internet redundancy

By Gerry McGovern

Entering the Irish job(less) market of the Eighties was not pleasant. Most of us were forced to think of emigration, while those who had jobs thought a lot about redundancy. Redundancy was a word we heard on the news again and again. It rang out with a note of fear.

Thought of one way, redundancy means the death of something. Thought of another way, redundancy means abundant, overflowing life. Funny, how even in a single word we find the classic play of opposites.

In many ways, human existence has been about eliminating redundancy. We have always striven to understand, to refine, to improve, to control. These urges have helped us build complex civilizations out of raw nature.

Nature, life and evolution, on the other hand, embrace redundancy. Why else would there be so much life, so much variety? Why is it that a million sperm are sent to do one sperm’s job? (999,999 will become redundant.) Why didn’t life simply evolve into one single life form?

I feel that Nature knew that one life form, no matter how refined, no matter how complex, no matter how strong, would always be susceptible to one super viral attack, one accident from outer space, one totally unpredictable event.

But we want to understand Nature. We want to get to know our genes intimately, so that we can design them, control how they should evolve.

In the same way, we have wanted to understand business; make it lean, make it focused. To make redundant any worker who no longer has an immediate economic function.

My growing dependency on the Internet worries me; the fact that in truth I know next-to-nothing about how it works. However, if I am to become dependant on anything, I’d prefer that it was the Internet.

Because, this amazing Internet finds its very foundations in the principles of redundancy. For it was designed so that a message did not have to go one defined route to its destination, but could pick-and-choose until it found the route of least resistance.

Not just that, the Internet has evolved much like a life system, by the multifarious contributions of its parts, rather than the direction from any centre. No one organization evolved the Internet, like no one cow evolved cows, like no one human evolved humans.

No one organization could have evolved the Internet! Nobody predicted its present state like no ape predicted the Homo Sapient. For all its faults, it is a wonderful, evolving system that everyone of us can contribute to and take some credit for.

Certainly, the Internet will require refinement and some sort of system of law, but no one Government, no one company should ever be allowed to totally control it. With our enthusiastic, democratic contributions we can flower its pool of creative redundancy, nurturing dormant solutions to unforeseen circumstances, protecting ourselves from any direct hits.

The Internet’s principle of open standards is like the genetic code of life. It belongs to all of us.

Gerry McGovern

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Previous issue: Internet life-support failure
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The Internet’s principle of open standards is like the genetic code of life.