John Naughton's article looks at the long term impact of the internet, comparing the advent of the 'net to the advent of printing. As Naughton points out, the internet is a lot more than the web.

Leads me to a thought train: printing is more than books. To understand the internet, a potentially useful exercise is to think about the impact of printing on developements in western Europe and the world.

"Firstly, there should be no central ownership or control – no institution which would decide who could join or what the network could be used for. Secondly, the network should not be optimised for any particular application. ... The implication of their (Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn) design was that if you had an idea that could be implemented using data packets, then the internet would do it for you, no questions asked. And you didn't have to ask anyone's permission."
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