A Second Chance for the DNS
Imagine that in 1983 Vint Cerf had visited a global city like New York, climbed the steps to City Hall and said to Mayor Koch that he and Jon Postel had begun thinking about an Internet enhancement that would make it easier to find the cities digital resources. That they were thinking of calling it the Domain Name System (DNS) and using names such as .com, .org and .edu.
And imagine Vint explaining his vision about this new technology's prospect for addressing the multiplicity of city needs; concluding with a plea that the mayor gather the world's smartest minds in New York City, help detail a desired DNS's feature-set and in the process develop a model that other cities might follow.
But as we all know, no one knocked on that City Hall door and the DNS was created without considering its impact on cities. And when it escaped from the lab, the technology spread like a virus and changed the world for better and for worse.
Remarkably, the DNS opportunity is again at hand. ICANN will deliver on its key mission in 2010 and we'll soon see cities sporting new TLDs such as .nyc, .berlin, and .paris.
The not-for-profit Connecting.nyc Inc. advocates for a more intuitive Net and a public interest based .nyc. We’re looking for Mozilla Week help creating a "Name Droppers Competition" - see http://bit.ly/qzNmZ. Related Link