1992 :: July 16 :: David Clark Articulates Internet Creed

We Reject: Kings, Presidents, and Voting.
We Believe in: Running Code and Rough Consensus.

Prof. David Clark

On July 16, 1992, Prof. David Clark articulated what would become the creed of the Internet engineering community.  He was giving a presentation A Cloudy Crystal Ball: A Vision into the Future at the IETF.  It was era of turmoil and uncertainty as the privatization of the Internet (the transformation of the Internet from NSFNET to commercial networks) was in its infancy.

During his presentation, based on Prof. Clark's slides, he made a number of additional curious observations:

• Our best success was not computing, but hooking people together.
• The hacks of today are the commonplace of tomorrow.
• Security is a CRITICAL problem.
• What we should do: Fix insecure services: PASSWORDS
• The problem is assigning the correct degree of fear to distant elephants.
• If we have a problem it is due to too much success.