Shaping Network Society

Jefferson’s Moose

If you are looking for a semana santa (easter week) reading, I urge you to order David Post‘s, In Search of Jefferson’s Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace (Oxford University Press 2009).  It is an amazingly beautiful written reflection on the the emerging/emergent new world of Cyberspace.

The book, which I’ve been laboring over for a good 12 years or so, has a (deceptively?) simple premise: to recreate Jefferson’s analysis of the New World, for cyberspace. It sounds pretty outlandish, and I guess it is — but I think it actually works pretty well (though I leave that to you to decide that for yourself). Along the way, we discover some pretty interesting things about the Internet, and about Jefferson — about network design, and Jefferson’s plan for governing the Western Territory, about the protocol stack and the canals of France, about distributed routing, end-to-end design, and the Louisiana Purchase. And about why Jefferson had a moose shipped to him in Paris while he was serving as US minister to France, and why we should care about that.

About Philipp

Philipp Müller works in the IT industry and is academic dean of the SMBS. Author of "Machiavelli.net". Proud father of three amazing children. The views expressed in this blog are his own.

01. April 2009 by Philipp
Categories: Blog | Tags: cyberspace, david post, jefferson, jeffersons moose, moose, semana santa reading | 5 comments