unfortunat
it's sort of sad to see this man today leading icann, a private corporation, in its quest to profit from the demand for domain names by squatters. selling the "rights" to run registries for some ridiculously high fee. seems not like something postel would approve of. definitely not the way you handle a "public resource".
past icann leaders have condemned this scheme as a protection racket (e.g. esther dyson).
i'd rather see an article on paul baran. his instructions were the most interesting. he didn't just write things and send them to a distribution list. he went and presented live in front of the telco people who thought he was nuts.
but i don't think he's looking for a return in monetary terms. he's looking for results of a different kind.
and that's the difference.
now, the question to ask is whether the investors that enable these sv startups have enough capital that they could fund projects to get non-monetary results, even if it means they might take a loss.
that's why things like spacex and such are different. it's not just about the money.
the worst part of this facebook ipo is it is totally unnecessary. they do not need the capital to carry the facebook idea forward. there is no reason they need to pass the risk on to the public.
when you invest in facebook you do so for one reason only: a financial return. facebook contributes little to society. it's technology that makes the contribution. this is hard for some people to process. but you can take away facebook and technology still remains. everything that we are doing with facebook is still possible. the network effect is still there.