> So far as I'm aware IP addresses exist out of a functional need, not a moral imperative, but if you have a source with regards to that I'd love to read it.
Are we talking about IPv4 addresses or are we talking about the internet as a whole? Because that quote seems to be about the latter and I was referring to the former above. I read the Licklider paper that they link and it's much more on the abstract side rather than discussing actual implementation details.
Licklider and Taylor did have some very interesting predictions about how the internet would shape up though. Probably my favorite quote from the article:
"Unemployment would disappear from the face of the earth forever, for
consider the magnitude of the task of adapting the network’s software to all
the new generations of computer, coming closer and closer upon the heels
of their predecessors until the entire population of the world is caught up in
an infinite crescendo of on-line interactive debugging."
Licklider and Taylor did have some very interesting predictions about how the internet would shape up though. Probably my favorite quote from the article:
"Unemployment would disappear from the face of the earth forever, for consider the magnitude of the task of adapting the network’s software to all the new generations of computer, coming closer and closer upon the heels of their predecessors until the entire population of the world is caught up in an infinite crescendo of on-line interactive debugging."