I’ve always been fascinated with stories like Dr. Neumann’s.  He’s leading a DARPA project to redesign the computer from scratch, given all that we’ve learned since computers came around.  Particularly with a focus on security, which this NYTimes article refers to as an afterthought.  Though these lofty goals are always laudable in the academic world, they are never acknowledged in the business world.  Once you start down a path and that path is profitable, there is no turning back no matter how much better the alternatives are.

I’m reminded of Internet2.  I don’t know much about it besides it’s the same thing as Dr. Neumann’s Clean Slate effort – the popularity of the Internet has exposed all sorts of flaws that we could fix if only we could start over.  But that will never happen.