Science & Tech Quote by Jon Postel

The line lands with the disarming plainness of someone who helped build the internet and still spoke about it like a practical household appliance. Jon Postel wasn’t selling a futuristic vision; he was quietly normalizing the idea that serious network work could happen from a living room. In the early-to-mid 1990s, “a pretty good ISDN connection” wasn’t casual at all. ISDN was pricey, semi-elite infrastructure: the kind of bandwidth that signaled you were plugged into the networked world before “always on” became a default expectation.

Postel’s specific intent is almost administrative: reassurance that he is reachable and capable, even outside an office. The subtext is more revealing. Authority on the early internet often sat with individuals, not institutions. When one person can coordinate protocols, edit the RFCs, and manage critical functions from home, it underscores how much of the internet’s “governance” was built on trust, competence, and a culture of volunteerism rather than formal bureaucracy. There’s an implicit ethic here: the network is where the work is, not the building.

Context matters because Postel embodied the internet’s transitional moment: from a research network steered by a small, technically fluent community to an exploding public utility. The quote’s almost quaint modesty becomes its point. It captures a world where connectivity was a badge of seriousness, and where the people shaping global infrastructure talked like engineers discussing tools, not power. That understatement is its own kind of authority.