-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 8:46 AM -0800 on 12/8/00, Ray Dillinger wrote:
Just by the way, how widespread is this use of the word 'geodesic'?
Not especially. :-).
Offhand, I'd refer to many of the things I've seen it used for here as 'distributed' or 'fractal'. Is 'geodesic' an accepted term of art for a network or protocol in which all the parts work roughly the same way?
As with everything else I know of any use, I stole it. :-). It comes from Peter Huber's 1986 "The Geodesic Network", containing (Huber's?) observation that as the price of switches gets lower, like with Moore's "law", the price of network nodes gets lower versus the price of network lines, and the network changes from a hierarchical network with expensive switches with the most expensive switches at the top to a geodesic one, with most switches tending toward the same price in the aggregate. Huber stole "geodesic" from Bucky Fuller, who in turn stole it from topology, where it means the straightest line across a surface. In three dimensions it's a great circle, for instance, the straightest line across a sphere, which is what "geodesic" translates to literally. Bucky called his domes geodesic, because when you pushed on a point on the dome force radiated out in all directions to the ground. Of course, the internet is the mother of all geodesic networks, right? :-). I've expropriated the word "geodesic" in all kinds of outlandish ways, like a cash settled auction-priced single intermediary (with lots of competing intermediaries, of course, just one between each buyer and seller) internet market is a geodesic market, like my claim that societies map to their communication architectures and thus we're moving from a hierarchical society to a geodesic one, and so on. There's a collection of essays on geodesic markets on <http://www.ibuc.com>, and pointers there to other rants of mine with the "G" word in them, as well. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.8 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com> iQEVAwUBOjEXhsUCGwxmWcHhAQGDigf+KobTrRn4xHJGvGHKauWEtsH90BVG+tJj Z1hIyFD9O5I6Az5+SNt1SO8dYyBqKwk103GzWmu8Gbm+mUJdgy/dp+Aoxou5nPt/ n/Mi2FVpYnzdnRPRbnE10R6hqeBqWoerjonfhhSbWur3TGJUPsJUdbWKeglaygMW 4eMPGCBNeVUufvvbUcQ5iqkA0nxxa+46XREqtFhKybSzBYaA2LfcHPTRoMbzWM8J c7+uias/tuT75pWo0xUA2vX5p2BQM8yHVrs46gunxBkAk2Lz8Ri7P9Pi2c0jOjwa yyYy32ElXgw0gdR16DupSVw/2tTRtZPFyv664FsT8g+Q7/PsNPYiyg== =fx+a -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'