Researchers associated with various universities and government-backed initiatives are exploring the idea that the existing internet should be scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up. Right off the bat, it seems pretty safe to say that our current internet infrastructure, which has billions upon billions invested into it, isn't going to be dismantled, and the researchers involved with these projects almost certainly realize that. Still, these studies are interesting from an academic perspective, and because they may influence future build-outs in some way. Those who are in favor of a clean start point to a number of different areas where the internet could be made better. Security is obviously a big one, and many of the different plans explore ways of building more security directly into the infrastructure of the internet. They also point to the rise of the mobile internet as something that the original internet researchers never conceived of, and thus didn't account for. As one professor puts it, in light of how much things have changed, "It's sort of a miracle that it continues to work well today." That sentiment, of course, would seem to betray the whole thing, since the internet does work well, despite it undergoing radical changes over the years.

The whole question sounds analogous to the debate between free markets and central planning. If you believe that complex systems need a high level of planning in order to work, it would seem miraculous that a free market system could remain relatively stable and efficient. But history has shown that, if anything, it's the centrally planned economies that more often go haywire. Perhaps the internet question should be turned around: why should we trust that a rebuilt internet, that was designed to fix the problems that we can imagine today, would be able to accommodate completely unforeseen issues that arise 40 years down the road?