Re: [wg-c] New gTLDs and ISPs (was: URGENT . . . )

[Milton Mueller <mueller@syr.edu>]

A.M. Rutkowski wrote:

> >         Mark Sportack, at the LA meeting, mentioned something about the
> > impact of new gTLDs on ISPs.  What do you believe the impact of new gTLDs
> on ISPs
> >would be?
>
> Hi Jon,
>
> Didn't this accompany the assertion that they had
> done definitive research to show that human beings
> couldn't remember more than 3 TLDs?

That's right. This is in fact a revolutionary scientific finding. The city of
Syracuse, always in the forefront of science, is in the process of
eliminating hundreds of restaurants, having learned that having more than
three or four confuses people. We'll start with the food industry and move on
next to long distance carriers -- rumours are that there are hundreds of
them. We're looking forward to a city free of all the noisy yellow pages,
billboards and TV ads full of conflicting signposts, for fear that they will
cause massive highway crashes, just as all those confusing domain names would
crash the Internet.

I myself am confused by the presence of more than 3 or 4 second-level
domains. Who can remember them all? Wouldn't it be easier if we reduced the
number to a few, e.g., IBM.com, ATT.com, and ICANN.org?