Stephen Downes

The concept Harold Jarche i getting at here is an important one, but not a widely understood one. It is, basically, the idea that you want your network infrastructure to be as simple as possible - to move data from A to B and nothing more. If we want 'intelligence' in our infrastructure - language requirements or data standards, filtering systems, metering systems, etc. - then it should be placed at the edges - either in the sender or the receiver, but not in the pipes or wires in between. The reason for this is, any intelligence added to the infrastructure creates overhead. It adds costs to the transmission of information. Moreover, pretty much any such intelligence is useful only to a minority of users, which means everybody ends up paying for the needs of only a few.