1. DNSC 6267 (Spring 2012)
Project Planning and Scheduling
A Planning Dilemma
— observations (mostly) from
The Master Switch, by Tim Wu
These slides originated by Dr. Denis F. Cioffi , January 2012
Project Management Program
Decision Sciences Department
The George Washington University

2. The Problem?
• ―Friedrich Hayek, author of The Road to
Serfdom, is a patron saint of libertarians for
having assailed not only big government, in the
form of socialism, but also central planning in
general. For what he found dangerous about the
centralizing tendencies of socialism applies
equally well to the overbearing powers of the
corporate monopolist.‖
– Wu, Tim (2010-11-02). The Master Switch: The Rise
and Fall of Information Empires (Borzoi Books) (p.
199). Knopf. Kindle Edition. (bolding mine)
© Dr. Denis F. Cioffi Professor@Cioffi.us 2 of 9

3. At A Minimum, Would Need …
• ―With perfect information, a central
planner could effect the best of all possible
arrangements, but no such planner could
ever hope to have all the relevant facts of
local, regional, and national conditions to
arrive at an adequately informed, or right,
decision.‖
– Wu, Tim (2010-11-02). The Master Switch: The Rise
and Fall of Information Empires (Borzoi Books) (p.
200). Knopf. Kindle Edition. (my bolding)
© Dr. Denis F. Cioffi Professor@Cioffi.us 3 of 9

4. A Two-Slide Aside — ―The Contingent‖:
What We Mean By ―Design‖
• ―Engineering, medicine, business,
architecture, and painting are concerned
not with the necessary but with the
contingent — not with how things are but
with how they might be — in short, with
design.‖ (p. 12)
– The Sciences of the Artificial, By Herbert A.
Simon, third edition (1996), third printing.

5. A General Definition of Design
• ―Everyone designs who devises courses of
actions aimed at changing existing
situations into preferred one. … Design, so
construed, is the core of all professional
training; it is the principal mark that
distinguishes the professions from the
sciences.‖
– Simon, page 111

6. More About Design
• ―Network design, like all design, can be
understood as ideology embodied …‖
– Wu, Tim (2010-11-02). The Master Switch:
The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
(Borzoi Books) (p. 201). Knopf. Kindle Edition.
• ―embodied‖ because design is planning
actualized (dfc)
© Dr. Denis F. Cioffi Professor@Cioffi.us 6 of 9

7. The Overall Internet Ideology
• ―Postel, another Internet founder, inserted
the following dictum: Be conservative in
what you do. Be liberal in what you accept
from others.‖
– Wu, Tim (2010-11-02). The Master Switch:
The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
(Borzoi Books) (p. 201). Knopf. Kindle Edition.
© Dr. Denis F. Cioffi Professor@Cioffi.us 7 of 9

8. Why Is the Internet ―Powerful‖?
• ―In a seminal paper of 1984, ‗End-to-End
Arguments in System Design,‘ they [David Reed,
David Clark, and Jerome Saltzer] argued for the
enormous potential inherent in decentralizing
decisional authority—giving it to the network
users (the ‗ends‘). The network itself (the
‗middle‘) should, they insisted, be as
nonspecialized as possible, so as to serve the
‗ends‘ in any ways they could imagine.‖
– Wu, Tim (2010-11-02). The Master Switch: The Rise
and Fall of Information Empires (Borzoi Books) (pp.
201-204). Knopf. Kindle Edition. (my bolding)
Professor@Cioffi.us 8 of 9
© Dr. Denis F. Cioffi

9. The Conundrum:
Success Flows From An Ultimatum!
• ―In 1982 Vint Cerf and his colleagues
issued a rare command, drawing on the
limited power they did have over their
creation. ‗If you don‘t implement TCP/IP,
you‘re off the Net.‘ It was with that
ultimatum that the Internet truly got
started.‖
– Wu, Tim (2010-11-02). The Master Switch:
The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
(Borzoi Books) (p. 204). Knopf. Kindle Edition.
© Dr. Denis F. Cioffi Professor@Cioffi.us 9 of 9