Then he went home. On Publius, the information is in fragments, but the whole can be reassembled from only a few parts. First, human knowledge found its way to the printed page, but printing presses were affordable by only a few, and easily destroyed. Then it went digital, but Web servers are equally expensive and almost as easy to control. Now information is diffusing, fragmenting - going underground.
Distributed networks look familiar to any student of political history.
Revolutionaries have always organized in self-contained cells so that the arrest or assassination of one leader could not decapitate the organization. Publius creator Avi Rubin points out that 70 percent of the Web can be wiped out, and his network will still stand. That means whole concepts of network security are falling like so many Berlin Walls. In his forthcoming book Secrets and Lies, security expert Bruce Schneier shows that corporate firewalls are vestiges of a time when local-area networks were like castles surrounded by moats. Any castle can be stormed, any network compromised.