That distinction is really useful. My critique is aimed at how often “inevitability talk” blurs those two levels together. It’s one thing to say “networks need a lingua franca,” it’s another to say “TCP/IP was inevitable.” When people collapse the concept into the specific implementation, that’s when the rhetoric becomes persuasive but misleading.
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That distinction is really useful. My critique is aimed at how often “inevitability talk” blurs those two levels together. It’s one thing to say “networks need a lingua franca,” it’s another to say “TCP/IP was inevitable.” When people collapse the concept into the specific implementation, that’s when the rhetoric becomes persuasive but misleading.