Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Unsung Heroes Save Net From Chaos

The same social structures that drive Wikipedia also keep the net healthy

From BBC:

Crack teams of volunteers keep the net online and functioning, according to leading internet lawyer Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard University.

The way data is divided up and sent around the internet in many jumps makes it "delicate and vulnerable" to attacks or mistakes, he said.

However, he added, the "random acts of kindness" of these unsung heroes quietly keep the net in working order.

Professor Zittrain's comments came at the TED Global conference in Oxford.

Incidents such as when the Pakistan government took YouTube offline in 2008 exposed the web's underlying fragility, he explained.

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