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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
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--
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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'
