![]() ![]() Big tech platforms end up creating some form of identity-as-a-service, or bootstrapping off of somebody else's. The Internet doesn't build in a notion of identity that maps to the real-world functions of identity-specifically, the part of identity that enables restricting someone's freedoms when they misbehave. ![]() were not meaningful parts of the model when the cost of the computers that connected to ARPANET was multiples of the median salary, a good working assumption was that physical security of hardware was assured, and network security was a subset of that. Privacy, security, identity, commerce, etc. The original plan was to connect computers at four universities to one another so they could share some files and programs. There's a lively debate over what counts as the Original Sin of the Internet, but two ways of phrasing the same problem are: ![]() The Internet has been evolving for decades, and Cloudflare can look at it holistically and apply some intelligent design to route around inefficiencies and design problems. Cloudflare is, in part, in the business of making the Internet work the way a techno-optimist in 1996 might have assumed it would. In the real world, "the Internet" is a handwavy term that refers to specific computers and the wires that connect them the Internet has physical limits that can cause latency at best, inconvenience and complexity by default, and failure at worst. And their Workers offering basically makes deployment function in practice the way it sounds like it should in the abstract. It's also an explanation for the existence of Cloudflare, which has turned into a key piece of global communications infrastructure.Ĭloudflare offers edge computing-it ensures that sites can keep serving content when they're hit with sudden spikes in traffic, whether that traffic is legitimate (hitting the front page of Reddit, for example) or not (getting the attention of a botnet that can direct a torrent of malicious traffic to take a site down). This little tautology is a helpful way to explain all sorts of phenomena, like why it pays for Google to be good at disambiguating typos, why Shopify doesn't run out of entrepreneurs with hyper-niche store ideas, why big tech companies are reluctant to offer live customer service, and more. If there's one mantra that's essential to understanding Internet economics, it goes like this: a small number, even a very small number, multiplied by 4.7 billion Internet users, is probably a big enough number to pay attention to. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |