 5 Feb 2004 @ 13:53, by Tom Bombadil
"…the intention was for NCN to have many different nodes. Many local groups and many servers that facilitated people's communication…The weak point is that there isn't multiple servers controlled by different people, and a system in place so that the network communication continues no matter what part of the network drops out."
— 
Ming The Mechanic - 02/22/2002
An interesting point, which gives rise to the following musing:
1. The post from which the above quote is extracted is dated 02.22.02. Is it still relevant today?
2. Are there out there servers run by people who might have an interest in pro-actively engage in such a network.
3. What would such a system look like?
4. Are there, among us, programmers (or people knowledgeable enough about such things) who might have an interest in running a server of their own and collaborate on the above idea?
This, of course, brings up the question of programming—it can be intimidating, and far too many people are turned off by the idea or don’t have the patience for it.
Somewhat poetically, Ming described it in that way:
"You could consider me a gardener in one of the New Civilization parks. You can come and hang out in the park, you can ride on the swings, or you can sit down at a table and make plans, or you can invite people in for a birthday party. I'll empty the waste baskets and mow the lawn, and at night I weld together new playground equipment and benches in my workshop."
Eric Steven Raymond, editor of the Jargon file refers to the greater gardening community as a shared culture. (What The Musing Muse calls “Creative Programming”, he calls “hacking”, but, hey, he intends that in the most positive sense of the term—and he means it too.):
"There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work… Hackers solve problems and build things, and they believe in freedom and voluntary mutual help"
For those of us who are not networking wizards and do not know any computer language, Eric Raymond offers some good “how to” advices and many useful links to some free tutorials: Learn how to program.
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