David Reed said in 2000: Collaborative creative spaces. With broadband networks we are reaching the point where "pickup" creation is possible - where a group of people can create and work in a "shared workspace" that lets them communicate and interact in a rich environment where each participant can observe and use the work of others, just as if they were in the same physical space. Yet the architects who would make the network intelligent are structuring the network as if the dominant rich media communications will be fixed bandwidth, isochronous streams, either broadcast from a central "television station" or point-to-point between a pair of end users. These isochronous streams are implicitly (by the design of the network's "smart" architecture) granted privileges that less isochronous streams are denied - priority for network resources. There are no mechanisms being proposed in these architectures to allow new applications that may be more "important" squeeze out isochronous traffic. Is it really the case that tight timing requirements of packets in a voice stream means that those packets' delivery should always take precedence over events with loose short-term timing, but vast societal impact? That is what these network engineers take for granted.

I think he's onto something again, and lots of other smart network engineers agree with him. How about some Gonzo support for these ideas - Any suggestions?