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Use firewalls at your own risk There's a terrifically clueful little "Bottom Line" editorial by Richard Martin in the August 28 issue of The Standard. Titled "The Nasruddin Model," it begins with the story about Nasruddin, a Middle Eastern wise guy who had a deep understanding of how word-of-mouth really works in markets. Martin's conclusion:
The new distributed networks Publius and Freenet epitomize this trend [See "We've Only Just Begun"]. Like Napster, they diffuse information across many computers, where those who wish to block its flow – dictators, bureaucrats, angry record moguls – can't corral it. On Publius, the information is in fragments, but the whole can be reassembled from only a few parts. To paraphrase the dictum attributed to Stewart Brand: Information doesn't just want to be free; it wants to multiply. Good stuff.
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