[12408] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: About the creation of new 3-letter domain(s)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sean McLinden)
Tue May 17 19:40:59 1994
Date: Tue, 17 May 1994 15:38:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: Sean McLinden <sean@dsl.pitt.edu>
To: Noah Friedman <friedman@gnu.ai.mit.edu>
Cc: dcrocker@mordor.stanford.edu, com-priv@psi.com, hostmaster@internic.net,
hostmaster@nic.ddn.mil, namedroppers@rs.internic.net
In-Reply-To: <m0q3QjJ-0000qQC@baalperazim.frob.com>
On Tue, 17 May 1994, Noah Friedman wrote:
> >We have a dilemma. People give out their postal and phone contact
> >information all the time. Why should email be different?
>
> Because physical (geographical) reality and virtual (topological) reality
> are two entirely different spaces. Why should email be forced to suffer
> the same limitations as the postal system?
>
> Let's be honest; geographics domain names are not the right thing in
> principle, and not even in practice.
Absolutely! In the past 9 years, my phone number, mail address, physical
location (and even description) have changed, but my e-mail address
hasn't, in part because it hasn't been tied to anything physical. With
PCS just around the corner, does it really make sense to attach an
address to anything physical (besides the user)? Because of subnetting,
IP addresses are (for the most part) geographical and this can cause all
sorts of headaches. Why repeat this for logical names?
Sean
