Internet pioneer Vint Cerf reminds us that the remarkable social impact and economic success of the Internet is in many ways directly attributable to the architectural characteristics that were part of its design. The three golden rules - nobody owns it, everybody uses it, and anybody can add services to it - are what distinguish the Internet from any previous communications medium.
"By placing intelligence at the edges rather than control in the middle of the network," says Cerf, "the Internet has created a platform for innovation. This has lead to an explosion of offerings that might never have evolved had central control of the network been required by design." Indeed, services such as Skype, Google, flickr, Linux, MySpace, and Wikipedia might still be just a twinkle in some person's eye.
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