Travel advice: How to get to Woods Hole, etc.

If you haven't been to BigHook before, here's some advice on which airports to fly into, how to get from the airport to Woods Hole, about the motels where you'll be staying, about the Airplane House, which is the actual BigHook venue, about the village of Woods Hole, etc.

What we're talking about at BigHook2002

The theme of BigHook2002 will be Decisions that Shape Networks.

Here's the Agenda:

Wednesday, 9/4
Noon to 2:00 PM: Check in, lunch, swimming, meet fellow participants.
2:00 to 3:30 PM, Session 1a: Intros, a decision you wish had caused different results - everybody
3:30 to 4:00 PM: break
4:00 to 5:30 PM, Session 1b: Bottom Fishing, or Can a Sinker Swim? - Googin, Horan, Prytula, Stansberry
5:30 to 8:30 PM: New England Clambake, music by the Crosbie Brothers and Mait Edey, fishing.
8:30 to 9:30 PM, Session 2: Perspective on a small, loosely connected planet - Aizu, Comstedt, Denton, Nanda

Thursday - 9/5
7:00 to 8:30 AM: Breakfast, fishing.
8:30 to 10:00 AM, Session 3a: Decisions and Consequences - Bradner, Pepper
10:00 to 10:30 AM: break
10:30 AM to Noon, Session 3b: Decisions and Consequences, continued - Odlyzko, Shirky
Noon to 2:00 PM: Lunch, swimming, music.
2:00 to 3:30 PM, Session 4a: Case in point: network security - Crocker, Reed
3:30 to 4:00 PM: break
4:00 to 5:30, Session 4b: The next big opportunity . . . voice telephony - Evslin, Hofstatter, Odlyzko, Turner
5:30 to 8:30 PM: Dinner, fishing, music.
8:30 to 9:30 PM, Session 5: Telling the story - Black, Cukier, Gillmor, Lindstrom

Friday - 9/6
7:00 to 8:30 AM: Breakfast, fishing.
8:30 to 10:00 AM, Session 6a: Good decisions to make next - Forster, Lucky, Shapiro, Weinberger
10:00 to 10:30 AM: break
10:30 AM to Noon, Session 6b: How Juniper Point connects to Planet Earth - everybody
Noon to 2:00 PM: Lunch, swimming, music.
2:00 PM: Adjourn

We can point to many decisions that helped make the Internet what it is today. One of the most important was the decision to separate Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) from the Internet Protocol (IP), which allowed IP to operate with other transmission protocols, like UDP, RTP and SCTP, which, in turn, allowed the Internet to be used for telephony, gaming, signaling and other applications that would never have been possible if "reliable" transport had been built into IP.

Other arguably* important decisions that helped determine the shape of today's Internet include (a) the decision to support existing networks, (b) the decision to use datagrams and routers, (c) the decision of ARPA to support the original research in the first place, (d) the decision to separate basic from enhanced services, and (e) Microsoft's decision to include a TCP/IP stack in Windows95.

There are many other decisions, not only from from realms technologic, but also economic and social, that have determined the shape of the networks we have today. (However, not all of the shaping has been elegant or pretty -- witness the Telecom Act of 1996).

I think it'll be fun for BigHook2002 participants:

• to talk about the history of various specific decisions, about what caused them to be made, and what the intent of the decision makers might have been,
• to propose additional arguably* formative decisions that might have shaped our networks,
• to discuss consequences of specific decisions, intended and unintended, and whether the decision makers would be happy with their decision in hindsight,

(and here are the "big fish"**)

• to try to figure out whether there are identifiable characteristics of a successful decision, that is, decisions with mostly intended, mostly beneficial consequences,
• to propose (and critique) some future decisions that arguably* would make the Internet even better
• to apply our knowledge of successful decisions to our proposed decisions to maximize the probability that they'll make the world a better place.

Of course, we won't be able to do all that without the usual wide-ranging, all-inclusive discussion of the forces of greed and good that are shaping the Internet today, of our efforts to ally with the forces of light and defeat the forces of darkness, and of what it might take to build the kind of network we want to leave for our grandchildren.

*arguably: argue dispassionately, listen passionately

Who's coming

BigHook2002 will be co-created by some 50 carefully invited SMART People, including:

Scott Bradner, former chair of the IPv6 working group, current Area Co-Director of the IETF Transport Area and Network World columnist.
Anders Comstedt, the Managing Director of Stokab, a city-chartered dark fiber company that started building its fiber network in 1994 and became profitable in 1998.
Steve Crocker, who organized the Network Working Group, the predecessor of the Internet Engineering Task Force, and wrote Request for Comments (RFC) #1.
Tom Evslin, the chairman and founder of ITXC, the Internet Telephony Exchange Company.
Dan Gillmor, technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, winner of the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award in 2002.
Bob Lucky, head of Applied Research at Telcordia, commentator on corporate culture and chair of the FCC Technological Advisory Council.
Andrew Odlyzko, Director of the Digital Technology Center of the University of Michigan, author of "Content is not King" and other iconoclastic works.
Robert Pepper, head of the Office of Plans and Policy of the FCC.
David P. Reed, co-author of "End to End System Design" (1981), which is the original Stupid Network paper.
Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association and chair of the Home Recording Rights Coallition.
Clay Shirky, explicator of peer-to-peer architecture, and its economics and social effects.
Jonathan Thatcher, chair of the IEEE 10 Gigabit Ethernet Task Force and principal engineer at World Wide Packets.
Timber, the Internet Predator and his running human, Tim Denton
David Weinberger, perpetrator of "Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization", author of Small Pieces, Loosely Joined, coauthor The Cluetrain Manifesto and "Paradox of the Best Network,", which came directly from BigHook2001.

BigHook 2002 once again has the privelege of being served by:

Joe Sterling, an inspired scribe who has a genius for capturing the flow of a conversation in words, shapes and pictures.
Chef Roland, creator of great food.

Here's a complete list of BigHook participants we currently expect . . .

Spouses, Partners, Children welcome at all meals, events, etc., (except formal meeting sessions) and to use the Airplane House grounds during the conference. (Please make sure we have their names.)

When

The conversation will convene Wednesday, September 4, 2001, at Noon with lunch, followed by the first session at 2:00 PM. Participants and guests are welcome on the airplane house grounds beginning as early as you want on Wednesday morning. Also, if you arrive on Tuesday evening, feel free to wander down to the Airplane House to see what's going on.

The last event will end at about Noon on Friday, September 6. An optional lunch will be served at noon. Participants and guests will be welcome to use the Airplane House grounds all day.

The detailed Agenda is still under construction.

Why: A communications conference with an emphasis on communicating

What a difference a year makes. BigHook2000 was a pause in our headlong rush to get networked. BigHook2001 was an ominous prelude to September 11. Today, on the eve of BigHook2002, "utter crisis" is the happiest face that the official telecom establishment can paint. (Maybe we should stop meeting like this.)

Personally I'm hoping that the participants in BigHook2002 will help me make sense of the new terror-security world I've been dragged into; a world with more emphasis on "killer" than "application." Not too long ago I used to smirk confidently when I said, "Out of control." It meant that we'd wrested some power from the Bellheaded hierarchy. It meant that amazing things would happen when we connect. "Out of control," used to mean, "Magic happens."

Now I find myself saying, "Out of control," with fear in my heart. Osama and Ashcroft have played their part in this fear, but I wonder if maybe I've had a small part in creating the mess we're in, whether stuff I've done or written about has had unintended, undesirable consequences. For example, did my writings about the possibility of a Y2K crisis turn up the gain, even a little bit, on1999 IT spending to cause the overshoot of 2000 and 2001? Or did my critique of telecom-classic play a small part, maybe a not-quite insignificant part, in hastening telecom's collapse before new, more appropriate business models could be discovered and put in place?

Can I say that these acts were the result of decisions I made? Can I call any of their consequences "unintended" when I'm not even sure what an intended consequence might have looked like?

Decision or not, intended consequences or not, the Communications Revolution is not over. It will not be stopped by the current crisis any more than the Industrial Revolution was stopped by the Great Depression. People still need to communicate. Technology will still make compounded advances. The rate of innovation might be slowed as giants consolidate and clash, but giants can't know all the desires of a people or all the corners of a marketspace. And I have faith, perhaps naive faith, that these corners will spawn irrepressible new ways to communicate that will be beneficial to humanity and to the planet that we call home.

The main goal of BigHook2002 is to try to become more aware of what makes decisions successful -- ours and other people's --and to become more analytic of the consequences of decisions so we can more effectively shape the next stages of the Communications Revolution for the benefit of our grandchildren. As John Perry Barlow said recently, "Let's think about how we can be good ancestors."

At most conferences, the formal presentations are not the main event.  The real action takes place in collegial conversations in the hallways, over meals, etc., far from the prepared, self-interested, marketing-oriented remarks on the stage. The modus operandi of BigHook is to capture "the action" as the main event. During these three days, "presentations," if any, will be brief -- and their main purpose will be to set the stage and context for ensuing respectful, conscious discussion.

The Sponsors of BigHook2002

Thanks to the people and companies who are making BigHook2002 possible, including:

Richard Prytula and Steve Mattioli of TechnoCap and YottaYotta, a TechnoCap company
Stephen Kamman and Tim Horan of CIBC World Markets
Mark Petrovic and Brinton Young of Earthlink.

plus special material assistance with Internet connectivity from

Tom Freeburg of Motorola
Andy Maffei of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The BigHook2002 Staff

Thank you to the following people for their dedicated efforts:

Dick Campbell, Audio recording
Judi Clark, Web work
Greg Elin, Sessionblogger software
Annie Lindstrom, Transcripts
Gardner Miller, Point man
David Stanwood, Music production

Back to BigHook Main Page.

Date page last modified: 7 Nov 2002