LUDIC LOG

Thank you for visiting us today, Jon.

Hey, it's no problem. There's really not a lot to do here. That's why we spend so much time talking to the living. Did you ever see "Superman II"?

No.

With the Phantom Zone?

No, sorry.

Anyway, it's like that.

You're considered one of the fathers of the internet, having worked on ARPAnet for many years and having acted as the director of the influential Information Sciences Institute. What's your assessment of the internet today?

Awesome.

You're optimistic?

Things are so much better than back in the '70s. It's very close to the realization of my dream.

Which was?

Quick and easy porn, 24/7.

Come again?

You said it right.

I don't think I follow.

Do you know how hard it was to get porn in the mid-1970s? Forget about videotape. That was years away. You still had to go to some nasty grindhouse theater to see anything moving. For static stuff, there was low-rent bookstores that charged ten times what the stuff was worth. Hustler-level photos for eight bucks; hardcore for ten or twelve, but with no money shots and the vag-pen stuff starred over. Real hardcore with no bars and stars, fifteen or twenty bucks. And if you lived in a small town, forget it. You were completely out of luck unless you were willing to risk home delivery.

I see.

And let's say you wanted nude photos of celebrities. It was almost impossible! Back then, such stuff was so rare, you could use it as blackmail fodder. It wasn't until the mid-'80s that magazines like "Celebrity Slueth" came out, and even then you were paying 10 bucks a pop for a look at Mariette Hartley's dress slipping off the shoulder at the Golden Globe ceremony. Pathetic. Whereas now...

On the internet.

Right, on the internet. You can find hardcore without even looking. I mean, seriously. Post once on usenet, even on alt.christians.for.abstinence, or open a Hotmail account, and within a week you've got 600 solicitations for free glimpses at triple-entry. And if you can't log on and find totally naked pictures of Pamela Anderson in five minutes, you're just not trying hard enough.

So you're pleased with the direction things are going.

Absolutely. Easy access, high quality, competitive pricing, and new developments in technology giving you more options every day. I mean, back in the days when we were all on the DoD's payroll, we never imagined in our wildest dreams live streaming porn chatrooms, where you could get instantaneous user-client interaction. We had a champagne jam the first time we sent a nude ASCII from D.C. to the Marina; now we can tell the girl where to stick the squirrel-shaped dildo and she does it right then and there. Assessed by the standards of its original purpose -- as a high-volume delivery vector for pornography -- the internet has to be looked on as an unqualified success.

Have you taken an interest in ICANN, given your years of service as the director of its predecessor, the IANA?

Absolutely.

What are your thoughts?

Well, during life, it was a delicate balancing act, trying to please everyone, to balance commercial and corporate interests against the democractic paradigm we intended. But I have to admit, despite some serious missteps, ICANN is heading in the right direction. Seeing as there are no legitimate technical limitations, compartmentalization and specialization is the way to go.

You're referring to the recent decision to make domain names more intuitive by creating new, easy-to-understand extensions like .biz, .kids, etc.?

Right. That way people know where to go to find what they're looking for right away. And it's easy to subdivide further. I'm currently haunting Stuart Lynn to try and get the go-ahead on .sex, but there's no need to stop there. Imagine the time and bandwidth that could be saved if we subdivided further, and people could beeline right to what they wanted?

Such as?

.cum, .lez, .gay, .blow, .fat, .troi, .teen -- the possibilities are limitless. Which is what we intended all along.

It sounds like you're happy with the way your baby is growing up.

Absolutely. It's a great time to be alive. Or so I'm led to understand.