In general, it is not always obvious how we should distinguish priceless, irreplaceable info-diversity from pointless blind alleys for which the best requiem is a chorus of "good riddance".(lingua franca)

the idea to apply w.brian arthur's work to the to the "marketplace" of software architecture is an interesting one

W. Brian Arthur is a mathematician, engineer, economist, and complexity theorist who might be called "the man who brought chaos to the marketplace". Arthur is best know for his work on role of positive feedback, or increasing returns [Arthur 1992] on economic competition.

thanks to brian foote i will remember that the 'lorenz butterfly effect' means the

famous notion that a butterfly flapping its wings in China might change the weather in Monticello, Illinois a month later

there were several occasions where europe at least tried to be different. codename bison tells about it, but it is just one piece to the puzzle. another one is the story around dns, where an european version has been in place for a while.

in '83 the domain name system (dns) got implemented commercially the first time. the only country in europe that didn't follow the american way for some years was britain. a historical fact, that somehow seems strange these days. peter kirstein comments that the other european scientists were interested in the research project, but never understood it as a longterm service ...

kirstein16 (audio/x-mpeg, 384 KB)

what the british used those days was called network registration scheme,

dns15 (audio/x-mpeg, 567 KB)

even when they finally implemented dns, they thought the american did it wrong and they decided to do it the other way around. instead of www.cs.ucl.ac.uk they used uk.ac.ucl.cs. they kept this method in place until ex-czechoslovakia joined the internet, peter kirstein says. (officially that took place in february 1992)

kirstein17 (audio/x-mpeg, 723 KB)

and - like kirstein likes to say: "as it so often happens" things start to repeat themselves: once peter kirstein had to translate names back and forth, now the developer of enum have to do the same thing for mapping telefon numbers into the dns to support seamless integration of voice over ip with the telephone network.

another snipped to the yankee-european style debate

next step for the use of dns.

ENUM functionality provides the user the ability to have a single point of contact (such as a phone number) to be used for all methods of both voice and data exchange, thus converging the independent functions of the circuit switched PSTN and packet switched DNS. ENUM is a voluntary technology, making it easier to find alternatives to circuit switched technology, that consumers or enterprises may choose to use to facilitate communications. (enum info)