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Danny Hillis registered the third domain name on the internet. You read that correctly — the third<\/i>. In today\u2019s talk<\/a>, given at TED2013, he shares what a different world the online community felt like at that point in time. About the size of a high school\u2019s Parent-Teacher Association directory, Hillis says that the heft of the book makes the online community of the time seem \u201cdeceptively large.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s actually only about 20 people on each page — because we have the name, address and telephone number of each person,\u201d says Hillis, thumbing through it. \u201cAnd everyone\u2019s listed twice because they\u2019re there once by name and once by email address.\u201d<\/p>\n He continues, \u201cThere were only two other Dannys on the internet then. I knew them both.\u201d<\/p>\n When Hillis picked his domain name, Think.com, the only options that were taken were BBN.com and Symbolics.com. It occurred to Hillis to make some additional selections, but he felt that would violate the take-only-what-you-need ethos that permeated the internet then.<\/p>\n Hillis\u2019 point is that trust was built into the technical protocol of the internet. While that was fine when it existed on a small scale, now it includes billions of users and an unquanitifiable amount of machinery and infrastructure. The entire system isn’t just vulnerable to attack — it\u2019s even vulnerable to mistakes. To hear why Hillis thinks we’re setting ourselves up for a disaster, perhaps one even bigger than the financial meltdown, watch this talk. It’s a bold call for us to make a backup system should the Internet crash. A must-see for anyone who has hopped online today. Which, naturally, includes you.<\/p>\n Watch the talk \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n Want to take a closer look at the ARPANET Directory? Here is a snippet view in Google Books<\/a>. And, it’s searchable. In fact, here is Danny Hillis’ entry<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Danny](\"http:\/\/images.ted.com\/images\/ted\/fc7b6c0a7974f84b6fd218a3409eb5248d214aad_240x180.jpg\")
Danny Hillis: The Internet could crash. We need a Plan B<\/span><\/a> To underscore the point, Hillis brought a book onstage with him. It\u2019s the ARPANET Directory<\/a>, a list\u00a0of every person who had an email address in 1982.<\/p>\n![\"Danny-Hillis-book\"](\"http:\/\/tedconfblog.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/03\/danny-hillis-book1.jpg?w=900\")
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Danny Hillis: Back to the future (of 1994)<\/span><\/a>\u201cI thought, \u2018There\u2019s some really interesting names out there. Maybe I should register a few extras just in case.\u2019 But then I thought, \u2018Nah, that wouldn\u2019t be very nice,\u2019\u201d he remembers. \u201cThat basic feeling of trust permeated the whole network. There was a real sense that we could depend on each other to do things.\u201d<\/p>\n
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