Lest I give the impression of being some horrible Luddite for what I will say later in this column, let me tell you a story from the before times. Way back in the second half of the last decade of the twentieth century (because saying it that way takes more words than simply writing “the late 1990s,” and that means I have to come up with that much less actual content), I was involved in the Internet Engineering Task Force. I say “involved” but mostly what I did was join working groups and then sit in the back wishing I knew enough about whatever they were talking about to participate in some meaningful way. I was trying to be dutiful and read all of the drafts as they came out—or at least as many as I could without suffering debilitating brain damage. That got to be a little confusing and tedious after a while, so I decided to organize them a little better.
