What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Real Internet Architecture’

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Updated 04 December 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Real Internet Architecture’

Authors: Pamela Zave & Jennifer Rexford

This book meets the long-standing need for an explanation of how the internet’s architecture has evolved since its creation to support an ever-broader range of the world’s communication needs. Countering the idea that the internet’s architecture is “ossified” or rigid, this model—which is presented through hundreds of examples rather than mathematical notation—encompasses the internet’s original or “classic” architecture, its current architecture, and its possible future architectures.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘On Pedantry’ by Arnoud S. Q. Visser

Updated 13 January 2026
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘On Pedantry’ by Arnoud S. Q. Visser

Intellectuals have long provoked scorn and irritation, even downright aggression. Many learned individuals have cast such hostility as a badge of honor, a sign of envy, or a form of resistance to inconvenient truths.

“On Pedantry” offers an altogether different perspective, revealing how the excessive use of learning has been a vice in Western culture since the days of Socrates.

Taking readers  from the academies of ancient Greece to today’s culture wars, Arnoud Visser explains why pretentious and punctilious learning has always annoyed us.