Unintended consequences, distributed networks, and sushi in Spokane

One paragraph in this week's reading of the third metamorphosis jumped right off the page at me:
"The focus of the [ARPANET, precursor to the internet] research was to design an 'internetwork' of computers that would continue functioning even if major segments were knocked out by nuclear bombs or saboteurs. Thus, the network itself was assumed to be inherently unreliable, with a high probability that any portion could fail at any moment. . . . they adopted a 'headless' distributed network approach modeled after the postal system. . . communication always takes place between a source and a destination."

This explains precisely why the Internet has been so powerful, and why traditional institutions such as governments (think porn and gambling regulations in the U.S., or ongoing Chinese efforts at political suppression) and corporations (think entertainment conglomerate efforts to protect their content--i.e. profits--to squish Napster and YouTube) have been largely unsuccessful at controlling it to date. The Internet is headless; no entity has the overarching ability to direct it. Therein lies its freedom and ability to empower citizens--not to mention vexing problems such as how governments can prosecute online child pornography rings which may span the globe.

Talk about unintended consequences! I doubt the designers envisioned just how profound their invention would be.

The effects of the distributed network model adopted by the internet founders continue to transform society in ways trivial and profound. This weekend, my husband and I traveled to Spokane to visit our freshman son at Gonzaga. As mentioned by someone in class last week, Spokane has free internet access throughout downtown (more progressive than Seattle??), so I was conveniently able to put out a work-related fire or two while online. When we walked into our son's room, he was listening to music online via Ruckus (I'd never heard of it, but I'm sure many of our classmates have), and showed us a video parody of a Tupac song set at Gonzaga by two students--who promptly went on to get a contract with NBC, he told us proudly. (I can just hear their parents: we spent $150K on their education for this?)

Our son wanted to take us to a sushi place, so I kept my doubts about ordering raw fish while east of the Cascades to myself, and much to my surprise, the atmosphere, clientele and food rivaled a place in Santa Monica I'd been to. I kept thinking to myself, in Spokane?

But as we drove home past Moses Lake, where housing developments are sprouting up like cornstalks, I recalled that either Google or Microsoft is building a huge server farm there. Because of the distributed network created by the internet, it's perfectly plausible that tech-savvy people would choose to live somewhere like Spokane, where housing is affordable. Hence the market for good sushi.

The distributed network is no longer merely virtual; it's also transforming geography, redefining where and how people live and work.