Many of today's business information technology leaders dismiss communications infrastructure as somewhat unworthy of consideration saying "it's only the plumbing". I'd remind them of John William Gardner's observation:
"An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society that scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, or tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its philosophy will hold water."
When we provide the channels and the bandwidth, to what extent do we determine how they are used? When our networks do deep packet inspection, filtering Kazaa or Skype or itunes downloads or when we enable protocols for embedded sensor networks is it plumbing? Is it gardening?
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