"The good old free and open Internet"

And an earworm for you

It’s become a frequent topic of conversation with identity friends of late.¹ In the early days of the web, our feeling of intellectual freedom and excitement was palpable. Big new ideas would zing back and forth in blogs, crossing company lines freely. Anyone could make a difference and nobody was consumed with monetization or social media influence.² There was nothing to scroll — except perhaps the blog aggregator known as Planet Identity.

I don’t believe this phenomenon is gone for good. I see sparks of it in the way ideas — like “Chief Identity Officer” and “Token-Based Access Control” — have bounced around different podcasts and LinkedIn posts, getting refined along the way. And those of us involved in standards definition work seem to have honed the art to a fine edge, accelerating development of protocols. (Whether we now have too many is a topic for another day.)

Today I saw Ian Glazer’s reflective post on 25 Years in the IAM business, and I’ve been reading Heather Flanagan’s great series (start here) that I’ve mentally bookmarked as “Whither the Internet?”

So I’m emboldened to share with you today the results of a challenge set for me a few days ago by John Wunderlich. He had been reading yet another post that hoped to “help bring back the good old free and open Internet” and, well…

this triggered “Back in the USSR” in my head, except the refrain was “Back in the HTTP”

As the onetime ringleader of the Internet Identity Workshop 2006b crowd that penned and performed “Bohemian Rhapsody in the Key of ID” (also affectionately known as Bohemian Rhaps-ID”), I couldn’t resist making the attempt.

Back in the H.T.T.P.

Sung to the tune of Back in the U.S.S.R.

Oh, surfed the web and ended up at A.O.L.
Didn’t get to bed last night
Clicked a blinking banner ad and entered hell
Man that virus was a fright

I’m back in the H.T.T.P.
Without a shred of security
Back — in the H.T.T.P.

Everybody blogging for the hell of it
No pixels tryna phone back home
S.E.O. was just a twinkle in my eye
Couldn’t even browse with Chrome

I’m back in the H.T.T.P.
With lots of speech — but not beer — free
Back — in the H.T.-
Back — in the H.T.-
Back — in the H.T.T.P.

Well e-commerce sites really knock me out
I’m going dot-com blind
I’m buying pets and furniture
My life’s on GeoCities with all humanki-ki-ki-ki-kind

I’m back in the H.T.T.P.
But now I’ve lost all my privacy
Back — in the H.T.T.P.

Well the I.E.T.F. controlled the world
Left F.T.P. behind
Then the flag of the W.3.C. unfurled
And H.T.M.L. wouldn’t be sideli-li-li-li-li-li-lined

Oh, Simple Object Access overtook the place
The cleanest Protocol around
SAML started federating cyberspace
Now we’re really Web2 bound

I’m back in the H.T.T.P.
With S. for added security
Back — in the H.T.T.P.

1. Looking at you, Mike Neuenschwander!

2. Though IP battles in the making of actual standards were still common then. I have the scars.