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Cassandra Crossing is a column created by Marco Calamari with the “nom de plume” of Cassandra, born in 2005.
Every Thursday, starting from September 9th, we will offer you an ancient prophecy of Cassandra, to be reread today to reflect on the future, alternating recent articles selected from the latest releases.
Today's article is recent and was strongly inspired by the very long downtime of Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram. You will surely have heard of it, if not, find it HERE some more information.
This article was written on October 6, 2021 from Cassandra
Poor Facebook! You don't wish to disappear on anyone, not even the incarnation of Evil.
But what if there was a more subtle problem behind a problem described in terms of acronyms such as BGP, IGP, DNS that have "broken down"?
No, Cassandra is not talking about excessive complexity. Natural organisms are even more complex and function calmly. Not even sets of out-of-control technologies, because even in the technological field evolution, in the end, tends towards stability.
It speaks of a problem of training, or rather of education, or rather of simple notions.
In Cassandra's time, when illustrious professors taught "Computer Networks" (that's what it was called, I swear) at the University of Pisa, they massacred your brains with the ISO/OSI model, that is, how networks should have worked in theory, systematically leaving out of the door the real world.
Meanwhile, the pressure of TCP/IP was creeping in everywhere, like when Blob leaks through movie theater windows.
Explaining how the networks were supposed to work, instead of how they worked, damaged not only the grade point averages of countless students, but also their minds. A generation of future systems engineers who, once graduated, had to become self-taught in order to be able to work.
Then TCP/IP reigned everywhere, like the Red Death, but benign.
Today the problem recurs, at a different and more pervasive level, but always due to a deficiency in the education system.
MAC? Routing tables?? IP addresses??? The Internet worked like this in the 70s, but not anymore!
Today adults and children with a minimum of IT culture, let's say from 10 years onwards, are convinced that they know how the Internet "works", and they have brought this belief with them, strengthening it over the years with other doses of "IT", acquired through scholastic, academic or self-taught.
It is on this flawed mental "base" that those who need it build subsequent corrective layers of realistic notions, in order to be able to work as "Internet professionals" at providers or in data centers.
But if it is true, as neuroscience says, that the mental picture with which we interpret reality is formed in the first years of life, this means that the "old" Internet is at the basis of normally functioning mental patterns, even of the most qualified “Internet professionals” today.
Maybe this happened; like Mr. Hyde, a notion that had been repressed for too long re-emerged with force just as a competent but tired Jekyll, technician of a famous social network, was carrying out an important configuration operation, and caused a "destructive interference" in his actions.
And shit!
Would it be enough to teach less dated things about the Internet, about how it really works, to build a more solid foundation in the minds of those who will one day have to work on it?
After all, they are just a handful of protocols and concepts, which can be explained in a handful of hours of lessons.
Why tell lies? It would be enough to tell things as they are, facts, not propaganda.
Those who really teach know this well. Fake news only causes damage. This applies to how the Internet works, and also to all the rest of the things that "write" the world in the minds of children.
Marco Calamari
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