Net Compromise in Tunis

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The domain name system is, in fact, two decades old this year -- and has not evolved much in that time compared to other Internet technologies. Meanwhile, much traffic, from instant messaging to peer-to-peer networks, travels outside the ICANN-sanctioned domain name system -- underscoring that the Internet is not immutable and that one day all the political bickering may not mean much.

Yet legacy technologies can be awfully persistent. The British Admiralty used Morse code as a back-up for ship communications as late as 2000. Technologies still in widespread use are difficult to unseat, regardless of kings and presidents -- or even rough consensus and a running code.

Kenneth Neil Cukier covers technology and regulatory issues for The Economist in London.

The photo accompanying this article on the TechnologyReview.com home page shows President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia addressing delegates at the 2005 World Summit on the Information Society. It was taken by R. Guerra and is reproduced under a Creative Commons license.